“A registry office sounds so uninteresting.  I suppose one just goes—­as one is.”

“I don’t think veils and trains are worn,” I observed, “except by persons of high rank who do not approve of the marriage service.  I don’t know what the Marquis of Queensberry might do, or Mr. Grant Allen.”

“Of course, the ceremony doesn’t matter to them,” replied Isabel intelligently, “because they would just wear morning dress anywhere.”

“Looking at it that way, they haven’t much to lose,” I conceded.

“And no wedding cake,” grieved Isabel, “and no reception at the house of the bride’s mother.  And you can’t have your picture in the Queen.”

“There would be a difficulty,” I said, “about the descriptive part.”

“And no favours for the coachman, and no trousseau——­”

“I wonder,” I said, “whether, under those circumstances, it’s really worth while.”

“Oh, well!” said Isabel.

“It’s a night to Paris, and a morning to Dover,” I said.  “We will wait for the others at Dover—­I fancy they’ll hurry—­that’ll be another day.  I’ll take one robe de nuit, Isabel, three pocket handkerchiefs, one brush and comb, and tooth brush.  You shall have all the rest of the bag.”

“You are a perfect love,” exclaimed Miss Portheris, with the most touching gratitude.

“We will share the soap,” I continued, “until you are married.  Afterwards——­”

“Oh, you can have it then,” said Isabel, “of course,” and she looked at the Castle of Rheinfels and blushed beautifully.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

“There was only one thing that disappointed me,” Mrs. Malt was saying at the dinner table of the Cologne hotel, “and that wasn’t so much what you would call a disappointment as a surprise.  White windows-blinds in a robber castle on the Rhine I did not expect to see.”

I slipped away before momma had time to announce and explain her disappointments, but I heard her begin.  Then I felt safe, for criticism of the Rhine is absorbing matter for conversation.  The steamer’s custom of giving one stewed plums with chicken is an affront to civilisation to last a good twenty minutes by myself.  I tried to occupy and calm Isabel’s mind with it as we walked over to the station, under the twin towers of the Cathedral, but with indifferent success.  To add to her agitation at this crisis of her life, the top button came off her glove, and when that happened I felt the inutility of words.

We passed the policemen on the Cathedral square with affected indifference.  We believed we were not liable to arrest, but policemen, when one is eloping, have a forbidding look.  We refrained, by mutual arrangement, from turning once to look back for possible pursuers, but that is not a thing I would undertake to do again under similar circumstances.  We even had the hardihood to buy a box of chocolates on the way, that is, Isabel bought them, while I watched current events at the confectioner’s door.  The station was really only about seven minutes’ walk from the hotel, but it seemed an hour before I was able to point out Dicky, alert and expectant, on the edge of the platform behind the line of cabs.