The service advances to the words in which they plight their troth.  Launce has put the ring on her finger.  Launce has repeated the words after the clergyman.  Launce has married her!  Done!  Come what may of it, done!

The service ends.  Bridegroom, bride, and witnesses go into the vestry to sign the book.  The signing, like the service, is serious.  No trifling with the truth is possible here.  When it comes to Lady Winwood’s turn, Lady Winwood must write her name.  She does it, but without her usual grace and decision.  She drops her handkerchief.  The clerk picks it up for her, and notices that a coronet is embroidered in one corner.

The fees are paid.  They leave the vestry.  Other couples, when it is over, are talkative and happy.  These two are more silent and more embarrassed than ever.  Stranger still, while other couples go off with relatives and friends, all socially united in honor of the occasion, these two and their friends part at the church door.  The respectable man and his wife go their way on foot.  The little lady with the coronet on her handkerchief puts the bride into a cab, gets in herself, and directs the driver to close the door, while the bridegroom is standing on the church steps!  The bridegroom’s face is clouded, as well it may be.  He puts his head in at the window of the cab; he possesses himself of the bride’s hand; he speaks in a whisper; he is apparently not to be shaken off.  The little lady exerts her authority, separates the clasped hands, pushes the bridegroom away, and cries peremptorily to the driver to go on.  The cab starts; the deserted husband drifts desolately anyhow down the street.  The clerk, who has seen it all, goes back to the vestry and reports what has happened.

The rector (with his wife on his arm) has just dropped into the vestry on business in passing.  He and the curate are talking about the strange marriage.  The rector, gravely bent on ascertaining that no blame rests with the church, interrogates, and is satisfied.  The rector’s wife is not so easy to deal with.  She has looked at the signatures in the book.  One of the names is familiar to her.  She cross-examines the clerk as soon as her husband is done with him.  When she hears of the coronet on the handkerchief she points to the signature of “Louisa Winwood,” and says to the rector, “I know who it is!  Lord Winwood’s second wife.  I went to school with his lordship’s daughters by his first marriage.  We occasionally meet at the Sacred Concerts (on the ‘Ladies’ Committee’); I shall find an opportunity of speaking to them.  One moment, Mr. Jenkinson, I will write down the names before you put away the book.  ‘Launcelot Linzie,’ ‘Natalie Graybrooke.’  Very pretty names; quite romantic.  I do delight in a romance.  Good-morning.”

She gives the curate a parting smile, and the clerk a parting nod, and sails out of the vestry.  Natalie, silently returning in Lady Winwood’s company to Muswell Hill; and Launce, cursing the law of Abduction as he roams the streets—­little think that the ground is already mined under their feet.  Richard Turlington may hear of it now, or may hear of it later.  The discovery of the marriage depends entirely on a chance meeting between the lord’s daughters and the rector’s wife.