ceived by her some weeks later, on the
occasion of Jack Stepney's marriage to Miss Van Osburgh. As a cousin of
the bridegroom, Miss Bart had been asked to act as bridesmaid; but she
had declined on the plea that, since she was much taller than the other
attendant virgins, her presence might mar the symmetry of the group. The
truth was, she had attended too many brides to the altar: when next seen
there she meant to be the chief figure in the ceremony. She knew the
pleasantries made at the expense of young girls who have been too long
before the public, and she was resolved to avoid such assumptions of
youthfulness as might lead people to think her older than she really was.

The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church near the
paternal estate on the Hudson. It was the "simple country wedding" to
which guests are convoyed in special trains, and from which the hordes of
the uninvited have to be fended off by the intervention of the police.
While these sylvan rites were taking place, in a church packed with
fashion and festooned with orchids, the representatives of the press were
threading their way, note-book in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding
presents, and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his
apparatus at the church door. It was the kind of scene in which Lily had
often pictured herself as taking the principal part, and on this occasion
the fact that she was once more merely a casual spectator, instead of the
mystically veiled figure occupying the centre of attention, strengthened
her resolve to assume the latter part before the year was over. The fact
that her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a
possibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy to
rise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty,
her power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny. It
could not be that one conscious of such aptitudes for mastery and
enjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes looked
easily reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence.

A special appositeness was given to these reflections by the discovery,
in a neighbouring pew, of the serious profile and neatly-trimmed beard of
Mr. Percy Gryce. There was something almost bridal in his own aspect: his
large white gardenia had a symbolic air that struck Lily as a good omen.
After all, seen in an assemblage of his kind he was not
ridicul