and he thinks the adorable bridesmaid is like the fancy as she was then
(which she is not at all), and that if the fancy had not married some
one else for money, but had married him for love, he and she would
have been happy (which they wouldn't have been), and that she has a
tenderness for him still (whereas her toughness is a proverb). Brooding
over the fire, with his dried little head in his dried little hands,
and his dried little elbows on his dried little knees, Twemlow is
melancholy. 'No Adorable to bear me company here!' thinks he. 'No
Adorable at the club! A waste, a waste, a waste, my Twemlow!' And so
drops asleep, and has galvanic starts all over him.

Betimes next morning, that horrible old Lady Tippins (relict of the late
Sir Thomas Tippins, knighted in mistake for somebody else by His
Majesty King George the Third, who, while performing the ceremony, was
graciously pleased to observe, 'What, what, what? Who, who, who?
Why, why, why?') begins to be dyed and varnished for the interesting
occasion. She has a reputation for giving smart accounts of things, and
she must be at these people's early, my dear, to lose nothing of the
fun. Whereabout in the bonnet and drapery announced by her name, any
fragment of the real woman may be concealed, is perhaps known to her
maid; but you could easily buy all you see of her, in Bond Street; or
you might scalp her, and peel her, and scrape her, and make two Lady
Tippinses out of her, and yet not penetrate to the genuine article. She
has a large gold eye-glass, has Lady Tippins, to survey the proceedings
with. If she had one in each eye, it might keep that other drooping
lid up, and look more uniform. But perennial youth is in her artificial
flowers, and her list of lovers is full.

'Mortimer, you wretch,' says Lady Tippins, turning the eyeglass about
and about, 'where is your charge, the bridegroom?'

'Give you my honour,' returns Mortimer, 'I don't know, and I don't
care.'

'Miserable! Is that the way you do your duty?'

'Beyond an impression that he is to sit upon my knee and be seconded
at some point of the solemnities, like a principal at a prizefight, I
assure you I have no notion what my duty is,' returns Mortimer.

Eugene is also in attendance, with a pervading air upon him of having
presupposed the ceremony to be a funeral, and of being disappointed. The
scene is the Vestry-room of St James's Church, with a number of leathery
old registers on shelves, that