"Why, Archie, dear," she said, in her clear, resonant voice, "we thought we had lost you forever. We all supposed you were dead, and here you are only married. Let me congratulate you, though after being engaged to so many girls, it must seem queer to be married to only one!--and you, Nancy," she went on, before Archie could make other reply than to shake hands; "to think you got him after all, just because you went ahead and caught him! I congratulate you with all my heart; only look out for him. He'll make love to every woman he sees."
She bent forward and kissed the bride before Mrs. Lovell could have known her intention, and turned quickly.
"Come, Delia," she called across the vestry; "come, Mary! There's nothing for us to do but to go home and take off our black. We may have better luck next time!"
With this ambiguous observation, which might have been construed to cast rather a sinister reflection upon the return to life of the young lieutenant, she swept out of the vestry, complete mistress of the situation; and although Archie Lovell always strenuously denied that he had ever been engaged to any woman besides the one he married, a general feeling prevailed in Tuskamuck that no girl could have carried it off with a high hand as Mattie did, if she had not had some sort of an understanding to serve her as a support.
But never again while the Civil War lasted did a girl in Tuskamuck put on black for a lover unless the engagement had been publicly recognized before his death.
The meeting of the Psychical Club had been rather dull, and it was just as the members were languidly expecting an adjournment that the only interesting moment of the evening came. The papers had been more than usually vapid, and, as one man whispered to another, not even a ghost could be convicted upon evidence so slight as that brought forward to prove the existence of disembodied visitants to certain forsaken and rat-haunted houses. At the last moment, however, the President, Dr. Taunton, made an announcement which did arouse some attention.
"Before we go," he said, smiling with the air of one who desires it to be understood that in what he says he distinctly disclaims all personal responsibility, "it is my duty to submit to the Club a singular proposition which has been made to me. A gentleman whom I am not at liberty to name, but who is personally known to many--perhaps to most--of you, offers to give to the Club an exhibition of occult phenomena."