It lay on the floor in a shimmering heap, and she trampled on it.  She had torn the tulle veil and orange-blossoms from her hair, and she stamped on those, too.  The maid who had been engaged to help her stood aghast when the bride kicked her wedding-gown across the room.  She folded it with shaking hands and smoothed the torn veil as best she could.  The beautiful lace-and-ivory fan was snapped and torn beyond hope of salvage.  Nancy tossed it from her.  With round eyes the maid watched her tear hair-pins out of her hair, rush into the bath-room, and with furious haste belabor her head with a wet brush to remove the fatal frizzings; but the work had been too thoroughly done to hope to remove all traces of it so easily.  Nancy brushed it as best she could, and then rolled it into a stout coil on the top of her head.  Her satin slippers came hurtling across the room as she kicked them off, and the maid caught them on the fly.

Back into the bath-room again, and the maid could hear her splashing around, as she scrubbed her face.  When she came out, it was brick-red, but powderless and paintless.  She got into her blue tailored suit without assistance, and, sitting on the floor, buttoned her shoes with her own fingers, to the maid’s disgust.  Then she jerked on her hat, stuck a hat-pin through it carelessly, snatched up gloves and hand-bag, and was ready for departure.  The expression of her face at that moment sent the maid cowering against the wall, and tied her tongue; the bride looked as if she were quite capable of pitching an officious helper out of a ten-story window.

“My God!” said the girl to herself, as Nancy, without so much as a word or a look in her direction, slammed the door behind her.  “My God, if that poor fellow that’s just been married to her was any kin to me, I’d have a High Mass said for his soul!”

The brick-red apparition that swept into the room put the final touch upon Peter’s dismay.  He thought her the most unpleasant human being he had ever encountered, and almost the ugliest.  The Vanderveldes had taken the clergyman off in their car, and only Peter, his uncle, and Emma remained.

“I’m ready!” snapped the bride.  She didn’t glance at the bridegroom, but the look she bestowed upon Emma made that doughty warrior quail.  Emma conceived a mortal terror of Peter’s wife.  She took the place of the Boogerman and of ha’nts.

Chadwick Champneys had his hand on his nephew’s shoulder, and was talking to him in a low and very earnest voice—­rather like a clergyman consoling a condemned man with promises of heaven after hanging.  Peter received his uncle’s assurances in resigned silence.

Two cars were waiting outside the hotel for the wedding-party.  As Emma Campbell stepped into the one that was to convey her and Peter to the boat, Nancy saw her stoop and lift a large bird-cage containing, of all things, an immense black cat, which mewed plaintively at sight of her.  It was the final touch of grotesqueness upon her impossible wedding.  The two Champneyses wrung hands silently.  The older man said a few words to the colored woman, and shook hands with her, too.