These things are governed by no law; and
rightly so, else the world would be in good time a loveless multitude,
held together only by the hungering ties of parent and child.
But this Sunday wherein Lali received a shock. She did not know that the
banns for Marion's and Captain Vidall's marriage were to be announced,
and at the time her thoughts were far away. She was recalled to herself
by the clergyman's voice pronouncing their names, and saying: "If any of
you do know cause or just impediment why these two people should not be
joined together in the bonds of holy matrimony, ye are to declare it."
All at once there came back to her her own marriage when the Protestant
missionary, in his nasal monotone, mumbled these very words, not as if he
expected that any human being would, or could, offer objection.
She almost sprang from her seat now. Her nerves all at once came to such
a tension that she could have cried out. Why had there been no one there
at her marriage to say: "I forbid it"? How shameful it had all been!
And the first kiss her husband had given her had the flavour of brandy!
If she could but turn back the hands upon the clock of Time! Under the
influence of the music and the excited condition of her nerves, the event
became magnified, distorted; it burned into her brain.
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