As he walked up the aisle with his sister’s hand on his arm, his face was crimson and reluctant, and he stared straight before him as if unwilling to meet all the watching eyes that followed their progress.  But the bride walked proudly and firmly, her head held high with even the suspicion of an upward, disdainful curve to her beautiful mouth, the ghost of a defiant smile.  To all who saw her she was a splendid spectacle of bridal content.

“Unparalleled effrontery!” whispered Lady Harriet, surveying the proud young face through her lorgnettes.

“Ah, but she is exquisite,” murmured Mrs. Ralston with a wistful mist in her faded eyes.

“‘Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,’” scoffed little Mrs. Ermsted upon whose cheeks there bloomed a faint fixed glow.

Yes, she was splendid.  Even the most hostile had to admit it.  On that, the day of her final victory, she surpassed herself.  She shone as a queen with majestic self-assurance, wholly at her ease, sublimely indifferent to all criticism.

At the chancel-steps she bestowed a brief smile of greeting upon her waiting bridegroom, and for a single moment her steady eyes rested, though without any gleam of recognition, upon the dark face of the best man.

Then the service began, and with the utmost calmness of demeanour she took her part.

When the service was over, Tommy extended his hesitating invitation to Lady Harriet and his commanding officer to follow the newly wedded pair to the vestry.  They went.  Colonel Mansfield with a species of jocose pomposity specially assumed for the occasion, his wife, upright, thin-lipped, forbidding, instinct with wordless disapproval.

The bride,—­the veil thrown back from her beautiful face,—­stood laughing with her husband.  There was no fixity in the soft flush of those delicately rounded cheeks.  Even Lady Harriet realized that, though she had never seen so much colour in the girl’s face before.  She advanced stiffly, and Ralph Dacre with smiling grace took his wife’s arm and drew her forward.

“This is good of you, Lady Harriet,” he declared.  “I was hoping for your support.  Allow me to introduce—­my wife!”

His words had a pride of possession that rang clarion-like in every syllable, and in response Lady Harriet was moved to offer a cold cheek in salutation to the bride.  Stella bent instantly and kissed it with a quick graciousness that would have melted any one less austere, but in Lady Harriet’s opinion the act was marred by its very impulsiveness.  She did not like impulsive people.  So, with chill repression, she accepted the only overture from Stella that she was ever to receive.

But if she were proof against the girl’s ready charm, with her husband it was quite otherwise.  Stella broke through his pomposity without effort, giving him both her hands with a simplicity that went straight to his heart.  He held them in a tight, paternal grasp.