a side-view over the assemblage. The building
was thronged--Mrs. Newell had attained her ambition and given Hermione
a smart wedding. Garnett's eye travelled curiously from one group to
another--from the numerous representatives of the bridegroom's family,
all stamped with the same air of somewhat dowdy distinction, the air of
having had their thinking done for them for so long that they could no
longer perform the act individually, and the heterogeneous company of
Mrs. Newell's friends, who presented, on the opposite side of the nave,
every variety of individual conviction in dress and conduct. Of the two
groups the latter was decidedly the more interesting to Garnett, who
observed that it comprised not only such recent acquisitions as the
Woolsey Hubbards and the Baron, but also sundry more important figures
which of late had faded to the verse of Mrs. Newell's horizon.
Hermione's marriage had drawn them back, bad once more made her mother
a social entity, had in short already accomplished the object for which
it had been planned and executed.

And as he looked about him Garnett saw that all the other actors in the
show faded into insignificance beside the dominant figure of Mrs.
Newell, became mere marionettes pulled hither and thither by the hidden
wires of her intention. One and all they were there to serve her ends
and accomplish her purpose: Schenkelderff and the Hubbards to pay for
the show, the bride and bridegroom to seal and symbolize her social
rehabilitation, Garnett himself as the humble instrument adjusting the
different parts of the complicated machinery, and her husband, finally,
as the last stake in her game, the last asset on which she could draw
to rebuild her fallen fortunes. At the thought Garnett was filled with
a deep disgust for what the scene signified, and for his own share in
it. He had been her tool and dupe like the others; if he imagined that
he was serving Hermione, it was for her mother's ends that he had
worked. What right had he to sentimentalise a marriage founded on such
base connivances, and how could he have imagined that in so doing he
was acting a disinterested part?

While these thoughts were passing through his mind the ceremony had
already begun, and the principal personages in the drama were ranged
before him in the row of crimson velvet chairs which fills the
foreground of a Catholic marriage. Through the glow of lights and the
perfumed haze about the altar, Garnett's eyes