“I doubt if she will have much time to bestow upon them if the County really do decide to accept her,” remarked Miss Whalley.  “You forget that she is now Lady Evesham, my dear Mrs. Lorimer, and little likely to remember old friends now that she has attained the summit of her ambition.”

“I don’t think Avery would forget us if she became a royal princess,” said Mrs. Lorimer, with a confidence that Miss Whalley found peculiarly irritating.

“Ah well, we shall see, we shall see!” she said.  “I for one shall be extremely surprised if she elects to remain on the same intimate footing.  From mother’s help at the Vicarage to Lady Evesham of Rodding Abbey is a considerable leap, and she will be scarcely human if it does not turn her head.”

But Mrs. Lorimer merely smiled and said no more.  She knew how little Avery was drawn by pomp and circumstance, but she would not vaunt her knowledge before one so obviously incapable of understanding.  In silence she let the subject pass.

“And where is the honeymoon to be spent?” enquired Miss Whalley, who was there to glean information and did not mean to go empty away.

But Mrs. Lorimer shook her head.  “Even I don’t know that.  Piers had a whim to go just where they fancied.  They will call for letters at certain post-offices on certain days; but he did not want to feel bound to stay at any particular place.  Where they are at the present moment or where they will spend to-night, I have not the faintest idea.  Nobody knows!”

“How extremely odd!” sniffed Miss Whalley.  “But young Evesham always was so ill-balanced and eccentric.  Is it true that Dr. Tudor went to the wedding this morning?”

“Quite true,” said Mrs. Lorimer.  “I thought it was so kind of him.  He arrived a little late.  Avery did not know he was there until it was over.  But he came forward then and shook hands with them both and wished them happiness.  He and young Mr. Guyes, who supported Piers, were the only two present besides the Eveshams’ family solicitor from Wardenhurst and ourselves.  I gave the dear girl away,” said Mrs. Lorimer with gentle pride.  “And my dear husband conducted the service so impressively.”

“I am sure he would,” said Miss Whalley.  “But I think it was unfortunate that so much secrecy was observed.  People are so apt to talk uncharitably.  It was really most indiscreet.”

Could she have heard the remark which Piers was making at that identical moment to his bride, she would have understood one of the main reasons for his indiscretion.

They were sitting in the deep, deep heart of a wood—­an enchanted wood that was heavy with the spring fragrance of the mountain-ash,—­and Piers, the while he peeled a stick with the deftness of boyhood, observed with much complacence:  “Well, we’ve done that old Whalley chatterbox out of a treat anyway.  Of all the old parish gossips, that woman is the worst.  I never pass her house without seeing her peer over her blind.  She always looks at me with a suspicious, disapproving eye.  It’s rather a shame, you know,” he wound up pathetically, “for she has only once in her life found me out, and that was a dozen years ago.”