ulously restored to high spirits
and looking radiant--had passed smiling and blushing down the aisle, to
be received outside with breathless stares by a large assemblage of that
peculiar class of people--chiefly females of a certain age--who seem to
spend their lives in attending the weddings of total strangers, we all
got home, where there was much champagne, and cake-cutting, and
bride-kissing, and melody from the aforementioned musicians in the
garden.

The presents--guarded with an air of studied aloofness by a
wooden-jointed detective, clad in garments of such festal splendour as
to delude several short-sighted old gentlemen into an impression that he
was the bridegroom--played their usual invaluable part in promoting
circulation among the guests, and supplying a topic for conversation.
They certainly sparkled and glittered bravely in the library, where the
blinds were drawn and the electric lamps turned on. (Kitty had seen to
that. Silver looks so well by artificial light, and so, by a happy and
unpremeditated coincidence, does the female sex.)

The bride and bridegroom departed at last, amid a shower of rice, with
that emblem of conjugal felicity, the satin slipper, firmly adhering to
the back of the brougham. (Master Gerald had seen to _that_.) Then the
guests began to make their adieux and melt away, and presently we found
ourselves alone in the marquee, a prey to that swift and penetrating
melancholy that descends upon those who begin to be festive too early in
the day, and find themselves unable to keep it up till bed-time.

* * * * *

However, there was a recrudescence of activity and brightness in the
evening, as the idea of a small dance had been proposed and carried, and
the invitations issued and accepted, during the five minutes which
witnessed the departure of the more intimate section of the guests.

When I returned from the House about midnight--I had gone there chiefly
to dine, as lobster claws and melted ices appeared to be the only fare
in prospect at home--tired to death, and conscious of an incipient cold
in the head, arising from forced residence in a house in which hardly a
door had been on its hinges for three days, I became aware that I was
once again the lessee of a cave of harmony.

The pseudo-Hungarian assassins were pounding out the latest waltz, with
a disregard for time and tune which I at first attributed to champagne,
but which a closer survey pro