Bonny Jean, and A Severe Threat — page 152: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A SEVERE THREAT. 145 monds, she passed on to her doom. Her heart was overflow- ing with memories of that other wedding-day, when, in spite of the dangers and troubles which had threatened them, life had still looked so fair and sweet. It all came back to her now— poor Geraldine! and it seemed to her, in that moment of horror and anguish, as though she could take the life of the wicked man she was so soon to call by the name of husband. The altar was reached at last. The white-robed bishop, prayer-book in hand, stood waiting as the bridal procession filed forward, the pathway strewn with flowers. <A grand show; but from the bottom of her heart Geraldine Vernon envied the little beggars staring at her with open mouths and round-eyed wonder, Even yet a faint, shadowy hope struggled in her breast that she might escape from the fearful fate before her—that it was not too late. For, somehow, hope dies hard in the breast of the young, and the wild delusion had crossed her brain that even at the last moment something might intervene to rescue her. But, alas! nothing came. The words were spoken, the solemn vows exchanged, which in this case, as in many others, were but a travesty ; there was a hush resting over all, and the ceremony went on to the bitter end. True, when the fateful words were spoken: ‘‘ Wilt thou have this man for thy wedded husband ?” there was an ominous silence. For an instant Geraldine hesitated. A wild temptation besieged her to cry aloud, ‘‘No, a thousand times no!” but a vision of her father (who, harsh, and cruel, and unnatural, was her father, after all) ‘arose before her mind, and she seemed to see him immured in a prison cell, or expiating his mysterious crime upon the scaf- fold; and so the words were uttered faintly as a sob—the fatal words, ‘‘J will.” The benediction was pronounced, the organ pealed forth the - triumphant wedding march, and the bridal procession filed slowly out of the church. Geraldine Vernon’s fate was sealed, and she was Lady Sydney. Just at that moment a carriage came dashing madly around the Gomichooks (eo) >