been extemporised for the occasion. This greatly
enhanced the pleasantness of the thing, and saved the necessity of
matrons and bridesmaids packing themselves and their finery into
close fusty carriages. A portion of the guests attended in the
chapel, and the remainder, when the ceremony was over, were found
strolling about the shady garden. The whole affair of the breakfast
was very splendid and lasted some hours. In the midst of this the
bride and bridegroom were whisked away with a pair of grey horses to
the railway station, and before the last toast of the day had been
proposed by the Belgian Councillor of Legation, they were half way up
the Apennines on their road to Bologna. Mr. Spalding behaved himself
like a man on the occasion. Nothing was spared in the way of expense,
and when he made that celebrated speech, in which he declared that
the republican virtue of the New World had linked itself in a happy
alliance with the aristocratic splendour of the Old, and went on with
a simile about the lion and the lamb, everybody accepted it with good
humour in spite of its being a little too long for the occasion.

"It has gone off very well, mamma; has it not?" said Nora, as she
returned home with her mother to her lodgings.

"Yes, my dear; much, I fancy, as these things generally do."

"I thought it was so nice. And she looked so very well. And he was so
pleasant, and so much like a gentleman;--not noisy, you know,--and
yet not too serious."

"I dare say, my love."

"It is easy enough, mamma, for a girl to be married, for she has
nothing to do but to wear her clothes and look as pretty as she can.
And if she cries and has a red nose it is forgiven her. But a man has
so difficult a part to play. If he tries to carry himself as though
it were not a special occasion, he looks like a fool that way; and if
he is very special, he looks like a fool the other way. I thought Mr.
Glascock did it very well."

"To tell you the truth, my dear, I did not observe him."

"I did,--narrowly. He hadn't tied his cravat at all nicely."

"How you could think of his cravat, Nora, with such memories as you
must have, and such regrets, I cannot understand."

"Mamma, my memories of Mr. Glascock are pleasant memories, and as for
regrets,--I have not one. Can I regret, mamma, that I did not marry a
man whom I did not love,--and that I rejected him when I knew that I
loved another? You cannot mean that, mamma."

"I know this;--that I wa