We were quietly united at the embassy this morning.  And now he can leave that dreadful consulate and has got his promotion, for he is to be charge here in Brussels.  It is sudden, but we were positively afraid to do it in any other way, I am such a timid creature.  When I saw the travelers’ agent on the steamboat, I was at first struck with his manly British bearing and his resemblance to Sylvester.  Then I found he had the matrimonial prospectus, and perceived he might be a link.  He has managed everything beautifully.  I had no idea—­With his assistance you need no more mind being married than going into a shop for a plate of pudding.  You must come up and be presented, to show you bear no malice.”

I cannot tell how I did it, but I allowed Sylvester and the agent to grasp my hands, one on either side.  Berkley, as to his collar, his cravat, his face and his white gloves, presented one general surface of mat silver.  He clasped me with some affection, but his intellect had quite gone, and he said it was a fine day.

I did not rally in the least until after my fourth glass of champagne at the dinner.  We made one party:  indeed, Mrs. Ashburleigh had brought her husband hither in that expectation.  Fortnoye vanished a minute to arrange the banquet-room; and as his wife rushed in to find him, followed by the rest of us, he snatched a great damask cloth from the table, and there was such a set-out of flowers and viands as has seldom been seen in Belgium or elsewhere.  The table, instead of a cloth, was entirely laid with; young emerald vine-leaves:  our places were marked, and at each plate was a gift for the bride, ostensibly coming from the person who sat there, but really provided by the forethought of Fortnoye.  In front of my own cover two pretty downy chicks were pecking in a cottage made of crystal slats and heavily thatched with spun glass—­the prettiest birdcage in the world.  On the eaves was an inscription:  “The Man of the Two Chickens.”  It happened that the little keepsake I had found for Francine consisted of wheat-ears in pearls and gold, adapted for brooch and eardrops; so I only had to drop them in beside the chickens and the present was appropriate and complete.

I cannot tell of the effect as Mary Ashburleigh swept into that splendid banqueting-room, one long pyramid of velvet pierced with webbed interstices of light.  If the largest window of St. Ursula’s church had come down and entered the room, the spectacle could not have been so superb.  One item struck me:  the younger bride, of course, wore orange buds; but for the Englishwoman, a beauty ripe with many summers, buds and blossoms were inappropriate; she wore fruits:  in the grand coronal of plaits that massed itself upon her head were set, like gems, three or four small, delicious, amber-scented mandarin oranges.  With this piece of exquisite apropos did the infallible Mary Ashburleigh crown the edifice of her good taste.  The two brides sat opposite each other.  A small watch, which I had happened to buy at Coblenz, I managed to detach and lay on the Dark Ladye’s plate as my offering.  On a card beside it I merely wrote, “ANOTHER TIME!”