Richard bade Clare farewell. She put up her mouth to him humbly, but he
kissed her on the forehead.

"Do not cease to love me," she said in a quavering whisper in his ear.

Mr. Todhunter stood beaming and endangering the art of the hairdresser
with his pocket-handkerchief. Now he positively was married, he thought
he would rather have the daughter than the mother, which is a reverse of
the order of human thankfulness at a gift of the Gods.

"Richard, my boy!" he said heartily, "congratulate me."

"I should be happy to, if I could," sedately replied the hero, to the
consternation of those around. Nodding to the bridesmaids and bowing to
the old lady, he passed out.

Adrian, who had been behind him, deputed to watch for a possible
unpleasantness, just hinted to John: "You know, poor fellow, he has got
into a mess with his marriage."

"Oh! ah! yes!" kindly said John, "poor fellow!"

All the puppets then rolled off to the breakfast.

Adrian hurried after Richard in an extremely discontented state of mind.
Not to be at the breakfast and see the best of the fun, disgusted him.
However, he remembered that he was a philosopher, and the strong disgust
he felt was only expressed in concentrated cynicism on every earthly
matter engendered by the conversation. They walked side by side into
Kensington Gardens. The hero was mouthing away to himself, talking by
fits.

Presently he faced Adrian, crying: "And I might have stopped it! I see it
now! I might have stopped it by going straight to him, and asking him if
he dared marry a girl who did not love him. And I never thought of it.
Good heaven! I feel this miserable affair on my conscience."

"Ah!" groaned Adrian. "An unpleasant cargo for the conscience, that! I
would rather carry anything on mine than a married couple. Do you purpose
going to him now?"

The hero soliloquized: "He's not a bad sort of man."...

"Well, he's not a Cavalier," said Adrian, "and that's why you wonder your
aunt selected him, no doubt? He's decidedly of the Roundhead type, with
the Puritan extracted, or inoffensive, if latent."

"There's the double infamy!" cried Richard, "that a man you can't call
bad, should do this damned thing!"

"Well, it's hard we can't find a villain."

"He would have listened to me, I'm sure."

"Go to him now, Richard, my son. Go to him now. It's not yet too late.
Who knows? If he really has a noble elevated superior mind--though not a
Cavalier in person, he may b