The girl, wrapped in the haze of her bridal veil, and a little confused, perhaps, by the anticipation of the meeting, paused a moment, as if in doubt, before the small oddly-clad figure which blocked her path—­a horrible moment to Garnett, who felt a pang of misery at this satire on the infallibility of the filial instinct.  He longed to make some sign, to break in some way the pause of uncertainty; but before he could move he saw Mrs. Newell give her daughter a sharp push, he saw a blush of compunction flood Hermione’s face, and the girl, throwing back her veil, bent her tall head and flung her arms about her father.

Mr. Newell emerged unshaken from the embrace:  it seemed to have no effect beyond giving an odder twist to his tie.  He stood beside his daughter till the church doors were thrown open; then, at a sign from the verger, he gave her his arm, and the strange couple, with the long train of fashion and finery behind them, started on their march to the altar.

Garnett had already slipped into the church and secured a post of vantage which gave him a side-view over the assemblage.  The building was thronged—­Mrs. Newell had attained her ambition and given Hermione a smart wedding.  Garnett’s eye travelled curiously from one group to another—­from the numerous representatives of the bridegroom’s family, all stamped with the same air of somewhat dowdy distinction, the air of having had their thinking done for them for so long that they could no longer perform the act individually, and the heterogeneous company of Mrs. Newell’s friends, who presented, on the opposite side of the nave, every variety of individual conviction in dress and conduct.  Of the two groups the latter was decidedly the more interesting to Garnett, who observed that it comprised not only such recent acquisitions as the Woolsey Hubbards and the Baron, but also sundry more important figures which of late had faded to the verse of Mrs. Newell’s horizon.  Hermione’s marriage had drawn them back, bad once more made her mother a social entity, had in short already accomplished the object for which it had been planned and executed.

And as he looked about him Garnett saw that all the other actors in the show faded into insignificance beside the dominant figure of Mrs. Newell, became mere marionettes pulled hither and thither by the hidden wires of her intention.  One and all they were there to serve her ends and accomplish her purpose:  Schenkelderff and the Hubbards to pay for the show, the bride and bridegroom to seal and symbolize her social rehabilitation, Garnett himself as the humble instrument adjusting the different parts of the complicated machinery, and her husband, finally, as the last stake in her game, the last asset on which she could draw to rebuild her fallen fortunes.  At the thought Garnett was filled with a deep disgust for what the scene signified, and for his own share in it.  He had been her tool and dupe like the others; if he imagined that he was serving Hermione, it was for her mother’s ends that he had worked.  What right had he to sentimentalise a marriage founded on such base connivances, and how could he have imagined that in so doing he was acting a disinterested part?