a tone that Rotherby looked to see whether he was being roasted. "You
wanted me, I think. I beg that you'll not thank me for having descended.
It was an honor."

It occurred to Rotherby that this was a veiled reproof for the ill
manners of the omission. Again he looked sharply at this man who was
scanning him with such interest, but he detected in the calm, high-bred
face nothing to suggest that any mockery was intended. Belatedly he fell
to doing the very thing that Mr. Caryll had begged him to leave undone:
he fell to thanking him. As for Mr. Caryll himself, not even the
queer position into which he had been thrust could repress his
characteristics. What time his lordship thanked him, he looked about him
at the other occupants of the room, and found that, besides the parson,
sitting pale and wide-eyed at the table, there was present in the
background his lordship's man--a quiet fellow, quietly garbed in
gray, with a shrewd face and shrewd, shifty eyes. Mr. Caryll saw, and
registered, for future use, the reflection that eyes that are overshrewd
are seldom wont to look out of honest heads.

"You are desired," his lordship informed him, "to be witness to a
marriage."

"So much the landlady had made known to me."

"It is not, I trust, a task that will occasion you any scruples."

"None. On the contrary, it is the absence of the marriage might do
that." The smooth, easy tone so masked the inner meaning of the answer
that his lordship scarce attended to the words.

"Then we had best get on. We are in haste."

"'Tis the characteristic rashness of folk about to enter wedlock," said
Mr. Caryll, as he approached the table with his lordship, his eyes as he
spoke turning full upon the bride.

My lord laughed, musically enough, but overloud for a man of brains or
breeding. "Marry in haste, eh?" quoth he.

"You are penetration itself," Mr. Caryll praised him.

"'Twill take a shrewd rogue to better me," his lordship agreed.

"Yet an honest man might worst you. One never knows. But the lady's
patience is being taxed."

It was as well he added that, for his lordship had turned with intent to
ask him what he meant.

"Aye! Come, Jenkins. Get on with your patter. Gaskell," he called to his
man, "stand forward here." Then he took his place beside the lady, who
had risen, and stood pale, with eyes cast down and--as Mr. Caryll alone
saw--the faintest quiver at the corners of her lips. This served to
increase Mr. Caryll's alr