Fleetwood swallowed that, too, though it conjured up a mocking recollection of the Baden woods, and an astonished wild donkey preparing himself for his harness.  A sour relish of the irony in his present position sharpened him to devilish enjoyment of it, as the finest form of loathing:  on the principle that if we find ourselves consigned to the nether halls, we do well to dance drunkenly.  He had cried for Romance—­ here it was!

He raised his hat to Mrs. Carthew and to Lord Levellier.  Previous to the ceremony, the two noblemen had interchanged the short speech of mannered duellists punctiliously courteous in the opening act.  Their civility was maintained at the termination of the deadly work.  The old lord’s bosom thanked the young one for not requiring entertainment and a repast; the young lord’s thanked the old one for a strict military demeanour at an execution and the abstaining from any nonsensical talk over the affair.

A couple of liveried grooms at the horses’ heads ran and sprang to the hinder seats as soon as their master had taken the reins.  He sounded the whip caressingly:  off those pretty trotters went.

Mrs. Carthew watched them, waving to the bride.  She was on the present occasion less than usually an acute or a reflective observer, owing to her admiration of lordly state and masculine commandership; and her thought was:  ‘She has indeed made a brilliant marriage!’

The lady thought it, notwithstanding an eccentricity in the wedding ceremony, such as could not but be noticeable.  But very wealthy noblemen were commonly, perhaps necessarily, eccentric, for thus they proved themselves egregious, which the world expected them to be.

Lord Levellier sounded loud eulogies of the illustrious driver’s team.  His meditation, as he subsequently stated to Chillon, was upon his vanquished antagonist’s dexterity, in so conducting matters, that he had to be taken at once, with naught of the customary preface and apology for taking to himself the young lady, of which a handsome settlement, is the memorial.

We have to suppose, that the curious occupant of the coach inside aroused no curiosity in the pair of absorbed observers.

Speculations regarding the chances of a fall of rain followed the coach until it sank and the backs of the two liveried grooms closed the chapter of the wedding, introductory to the honeymoon at Esslemont, seven miles distant by road, to the right of Lekkatts.  It was out of sight that the coach turned to the left, Northwestward.

CHAPTER XV

OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON

A famous maxim in the book of the Old Buccaneer, treating of precaution, as ‘The brave man’s clean conscience,’ with sound counsel to the adventurous, has it:—­

’Then you sail away into the tornado, happy as a sealed bottle of ripe wine.’

It should mean, that brave men entering the jaws of hurricanes are found to have cheerful hearts in them when they know they have done their best.  But, touching the picture of happiness, conceive the bounteous Bacchic spirit in the devoutness of a Sophocles, and you find comparison neighbour closely between the sealed wine-flask and the bride, who is being driven by her husband to the nest of the unknown on her marriage morn.