‘The wedding isn’t going to be postponed after all, Elizabeth,’ announced Marion gleefully.

‘I knowed it wouldn’t be, Miss Marryun, when I see a weddin’ wreath in your cup.  I tell you the Signs is always right.’

Marion shook her head.  ’Not always.  Didn’t you once tell me that my future husband would cross water to meet me?  Mr. Rawlings, now, has been here all the time.’

Elizabeth paused in the act of arranging the tea-table, and stood in a prophetic attitude with the teapot held aloft.

‘Oo ses the Signs is wrong?’ she demanded.  ’Isn’t Mr. Roarings an Irishman, an’ was born in Dubling?  Now I’d like to know ’ow any one can get from Ireland to London without crossin’ water, anyway!’

[Illustration:  ‘Oo ses the Signs is wrong?’]

Marion bowed her head, meekly acquiescent.  ’I never thought of that,
Elizabeth.  You always seem to be right.’

CHAPTER XX

I had not seen Marion and William since their marriage as they had gone on a six-months’ tour of the Italian lakes, but I was haunted with the foreboding that the match was not, after all, turning out a success.

For one thing, Marion’s silence regarding her marriage was unusual.  She wrote only brief notes that made no reference to William.  As for William, he did not write at all.

Now Marion is what you would call an ardent correspondent, as well as being a communicative person.  If she were happy she would be likely to write no less than eight pages three times a week breathing praise of William—­I mean that would be the general tone of her letters.  But now she devoted herself exclusively to descriptions of scenery and relating episodes regarding the constant losing and regaining of their baggage on their journeys, which though in its way instructive, struck me as lacking vital interest.

The affair troubled me, because I knew that I was, in a measure, responsible for the match.  William had left the decision in my hands, and, on thinking it over, it struck me as a rather cowardly thing to do.  What right had he to put it on to me?  I knew that if they were not happy I should be haunted by remorse to the end of my days.  It was an annoying situation.

When they arrived home and wired from an hotel in London that they were coming up to see me the next day my trepidation increased.  Supposing they came to me with reproaches, even recriminations?  I awaited their visit in a subdued frame of mind.

Not so Elizabeth.  Her jubilant air, her triumphant expression when she spoke of the newly wedded pair, ended by irritating me.

‘Getting married isn’t the only thing in life; as you seem to think,’ I said rather severely, after a remark of hers that she was glad to think Marion was so happily settled.

‘Maybe not, but it’s the best,’ she commented, ‘an’ as I always sed about Miss Marryun——­’