Page held her breath; the intensity of the situation seemed to her, almost physically, straining tighter and tighter with every passing instant. She was awed, stricken; and Laura appeared to her to be all at once a woman transfigured, semi-angelic, unknowable, exalted. The solemnity of those prolonged, canorous syllables: “I require and charge you both, as ye shall answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed,” weighed down upon her spirits with an almost intolerable majesty. Oh, it was all very well to speak lightly of marriage, to consider it in a vein of mirth. It was a pretty solemn affair, after all; and she herself, Page Dearborn, was a wicked, wicked girl, full of sins, full of deceits and frivolities, meriting of punishment⁠—on “that dreadful day of judgment.” Only last week she had deceived Aunt Wess’ in the matter of one of her young men. It was time she stopped. Today would mark a change. Henceforward, she resolved, she would lead a new life.

“God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost⁠ ⁠…”