[ILLUSTRATION:  THE MIMIC HUNT.]

At the head walked Mr. Cookson & Jenkinson.  He still wore that species of shooting-costume which he had made his uniform, but it was decked with roses, and his hands were encased in milk-white gloves:  on his hands, besides the gloves, he had the two grammatical ladies from the Rhine steamboat in guise of bridesmaids.  Behind him walked Mary Ashburleigh.  And emerging from the skirts of Mary Ashburleigh’s dress, with the embarrassed happiness of a middle-aged bridegroom, was—­no? yes! no, no! but yes—­was Sylvester Berkley.  I will not expose what I suffered to the curiosity of imperfectly sympathetic strangers.  I did not faint, and I believe men in genuine despair never do so.  But I felt that weakness and unmanageableness of knee which comes with strong mental anguish, and I sank back impotent upon the baron, whose lingering legs repudiated the pressure, so that we both accumulated miserably upon Grandstone.  My eyes closed, and I did not hear the Dark Ladye’s salutations to Frau Kranich.  But I awoke to see with anguish a sight that drew involuntary applause from all that careless crowd.

It was the salute of the two brides.  Imagine, if you can, two great purple pansies, flushed with all the perfumed sap of an Eden spring-time, threaded with diamonds of myriad-faceted dew,—­imagine them leaning forward on their elastic stems until both their soft velvet countenances cling together and exchange mutually their caparisons of honeyed gems; then let them sway gently back, and balance once more in their morning splendor.  Such was the effect when these two imperial creatures approached each other and imprinted with lips and palms a sister’s salute.  Mary Ashburleigh, whom the throng recognized as a natural empress, was arrayed this morning as brides are seldom arrayed, but with a sense of artistic obedience to her own sumptuous nature and personality.  The royal purple of her velvets was cut, on skirt and bodice, into one continuous fretwork of heavy scrolls and leafage, and through the crevices of this textile carving shone the robe she carried beneath:  it was tawny yellow, for she wore under her outward dress a complete robe of ancient lace, whose cobweb softness was more than half sacrificed—­only perceived as the slashes of her velvets made it evident.  It was such dressing as queens alone should indulge in perhaps, but Mary Ashburleigh chose for once to do justice to her style and her magnificence.

I was leaning against a tree, stunned in the sick sunshine.  I heard, while my eyes were closed, a sort of voluminous cloudy roll, and the Dark Ladye was beside me.  She whispered quickly and volubly in my ear, “I tried to confide in you, but I could not get it spoken.  Yet I managed to confess that my heart had been touched.  It was only this summer—­at the Molkencur over Heidelberg—­he lectured about the ruins.  ’Twas information—­’twas rapture!  I found at once he was the Magician.