cle, if you mean that. She'd have given her
left hand to have had it completed. I rather think you've had an
escape, Griff; and if I were you, I'd make the best of it." Sir
Griffin spoke not another word, but left the church with his friend
in the brougham that had brought them, and so he disappears from our
story. Mr. Emilius looked after him with wistful eyes, regretful for
his fee. Had the baronet been less coarse and violent in his language
he would have asked for it; but he feared that he might be cursed
in his own church, before his clerk, and abstained. Late in the
afternoon Lord George, when he had administered comfort to the
disappointed bridegroom in the shape of a hot lunch, Curacoa,
and cigars, walked up to Hertford Street, calling at the hotel
in Albemarle Street on the way. The waiter told him all that he
knew. Some thirty or forty guests had come to the wedding-banquet,
and had all been sent away with tidings that the marriage had
been--postponed. "You might have told 'em a trifle more than that,"
said Lord George. "Postponed was pleasantest, my lord," said the
waiter. "Anyways, that was said, and we supposes, my lord, as the
things ain't wanted now." Lord George replied that, as far as he
knew, the things were not wanted, and then continued his way up to
Hertford Street.

At first he saw Lizzie Eustace, upon whom the misfortune of the
day had had a most depressing effect. The wedding was to have been
the one morsel of pleasing excitement which would come before she
underwent the humble penance to which she was doomed. That was
frustrated and abandoned, and now she could think only of Mr.
Camperdown, her cousin Frank, and Lady Glencora Palliser. "What's
up now?" said Lord George, with that disrespect which had always
accompanied his treatment of her since she had told him her secret.
"What's the meaning of all this?"

"I daresay that you know as well as I do, my lord."

"I must know a good deal if I do. It seems that among you there is
nothing but one trick upon another."

"I suppose you are speaking of your own friends, Lord George. You
doubtless know much more than I do of Miss Roanoke's affairs."

"Does she mean to say that she doesn't mean to marry the man at all?"

"So I understand;--but really you had better send for Mrs.
Carbuncle."

He did send for Mrs. Carbuncle, and after some words with her, was
taken up into Lucinda's room. There sat the unfortunate girl, in the
chair from which she