Mrs. Frost was less manageable.  Though warmly invited by the Conways, and fondly entreated by her grandson, she shook her head, and said she was past those things, and that the old mother always stayed at home to cook the wedding dinner.  She should hear all when Clara came home the next day, and should be ready for the happy pair when they would return for Christmas, after a brief stay at Thornton Conway, which Isabel wished James to see, that he might share in all her old associations.

All the rest of the party journeyed to London on a November day; and, in gaslight and gloom, they deposited Mary at her aunt’s house in Bryanston Square.

Gaslight was the staple of Hymen’s torch the next morning.  London was under one of the fogs, of which it is popularly said you may cut them with a knife.  The church was in dim twilight; the bride and bridegroom loomed through the haze, and the indistinctness made Clara’s fine tall figure appear quite majestic above the heads of the other bridesmaids.

The breakfast was by lamp-light, and the mist looked lurid and grim over the white cake, and no one talked of anything but the comparative density of fogs; and Mr. Mansell’s asthma had come on, and his speech was devolved upon Lord Ormersfield, to whom Louis had imprudently promised exemption.

What was worse, Lady Conway had paired them off in the order of precedence; and Louis was a victim to two dowagers, between whom he could neither see nor speak to Mary.  He was the more concerned, because he had thought her looking depressed and avoiding his eye.

He tried to believe this caution, but he thought she was also eluding bis father, and her whole air gave him a vague uneasiness.  The whole party were to dine with Lady Conway; and, trusting in the meantime to discover what was on her spirits, be tried to resign himself to the order of the day, without a farther glimpse of her.

When the married pair took leave, Walter gave his sister a great hug, but had no perception of his office of handing her downstairs; and it was Fitzjocelyn who gave her his arm, and put her into the carriage, with an augury that the weather would be beautiful when once they had left the fog in London.

She smiled dreamily, and repeated, ‘beautiful,’ as though all were so beautiful already to her that she did not so much as perceive the fog.

James pressed his hand, saying, ’I am glad you are to be the one to be happy next.’

‘You do not look so,’ said Clara, earnestly.

The two sisters had come partly downstairs, but their London habits had restrained them from following to the street-door, as Clara had done; and now they had rushed up again, while Clara, with one foot on the staircase, looked in her cousin’s face, as he tried to smile in answer, and repeated, ‘Louis, I hoped you were quite happy.’

‘I am,’ said Louis, quickly.

‘Then why do you look so grave and uneasy?’