On My Wedding Day, A Madman Claimed My Bride

At Lavinia Hinton's ninth wedding, her childhood sweetheart Cedric Marcellus, broken by mental illness, presses a knife to the groom's mother's neck and demands that the groom be him. Lavinia tears off her veil and pleads with Phineas Sanford to understand: she promised Cedric's mother never to send him to a mental hospital. Under the guests' mockery, Phineas strips off the groom's suit piece by piece and hands it over, his mother's life still in Cedric's hands.

Doctors rush in, Cedric panics, and the knife cuts deep. Phineas knocks him down, but Cedric grabs a shard of glass and stabs him while he holds his bleeding mother. She dies on the operating table. Lavinia defends Cedric, has him released, and calls the killing a private matter to be settled with money.

Phineas buries his mother alone, tells his superior he accepts the last suggestion, and prepares to leave in three days. Returning home late, he finds Lavinia and Cedric tangled together on the sofa, Cedric watching him with open provocation.