At first they imagined that the bride and bridegroom would arrive
immediately, and attached no importance at all to their being
late. Then they began to look more and more often towards the
door, and to talk of whether anything could have happened. Then
the long delay began to be positively discomforting, and
relations and guests tried to look as if they were not thinking
of the bridegroom but were engrossed in conversation.

The head deacon, as though to remind them of the value of his
time, coughed impatiently, making the window-panes quiver in
their frames. In the choir the bored choristers could be heard
trying their voices and blowing their noses. The priest was
continually sending first the beadle and then the deacon to find
out whether the bridegroom had not come, more and more often he
went himself, in a lilac vestment and an embroidered sash, to the
side door, expecting to see the bridegroom. At last one of the
ladies, glancing at her watch, said, "It really is strange,
though!" and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly
expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction. One of the
bridegroom's best men went to find out what had happened. Kitty
meanwhile had long ago been quite ready, and in her white dress
and long veil and wreath of orange blossoms she was standing in
the drawing-room of the Shtcherbatskys' house with her sister,
Madame Lvova, who was her bridal-mother. She was looking out of
the window, and had been for over half an hour anxiously
expecting to hear from the best man that her bridegroom was at
the church.