She laughed.

“Did Papa tell you that?”

“No.  I don’t know who told me.  I—­I got the impression.”  He almost stammered.  “I must have misunderstood.”

She meditated.

“It sounds awfully like Papa.  He simply can’t believe, poor thing, that I’d stick to anything so respectable.”

“Hah!” He laughed out his contempt for the Vicar.  He had forgotten that he too had wondered.

“Chuck it, Gwenda,” he said, “chuck it.”

“I can’t,” she said.  “Not yet.  It’s too lucrative.”

“But if it makes you seedy?”

“It doesn’t.  It won’t.  It isn’t hard work.  Only——­” She broke off.  “It’s time for you to go.”

“Steve!  Steve!”

Rowcliffe’s youngest cousin was calling from the study window.

“Come along.  Mary’s ready.”

“All right,” he shouted.  “I’m coming.”

But he stood still there at the end of the orchard under the gray wall.

“Good-bye, Steven.”

Gwenda put out her hand.

He held her with his troubled eyes.  He did not see her hand.  He saw her eyes only that troubled his.

“I say, is it very beastly?”

“No.  Not a bit.  You must go, Steven, you must go.”

“If I’d only known,” he persisted.

They were going down the path now toward the house.

“I wouldn’t have let you——­”

“You couldn’t have stopped me.”

(It was what she had always said to all of them.)

She smiled.  “You didn’t stop me going, you know.”

“If you’d only told me—­”

She smiled again, a smile as of infinite wisdom.  “Dear Steven, there was nothing to tell.”

They had come to the door in the wall.  It led into the garden.  He opened to let her pass through.

The wedding-party was gathered together on the flagged path before the house.  It greeted them with laughter and cries, cheerfully ironic.

The bride in her traveling dress stood on the threshold.  Outside the carriage waited at the open gate.

Rowcliffe took Mary’s hand in his and they ran down the path.

“He can sprint fast enough now,” said Rowcliffe’s uncle.

* * * * *

But his youngest cousin and Harker, his best friend, had gone faster.  They were waiting together on the bridge, and the girl had a slipper in her hand.

“Were you ever,” she said, “at such an awful wedding?”

Harker saw nothing wrong about the wedding but he admitted that his experience was small.

The youngest cousin was not appeased by his confession.  She went on.

“Why on earth didn’t Steven try to marry Gwenda?”

“Not much good trying,” said the doctor, “if she wouldn’t have him.”

“You believe that silly story?  I don’t.  Did you see her face?”

Harker admitted that he had seen her face.