Away in London, on this same marriage day, Lady Roxmouth, formerly Mrs. Fred Vancourt, sat at luncheon in her sumptuously furnished house in Park Lane, and looked across the table at her husband, while he lazily sipped a glass of wine.

“That ridiculous girl Maryllia has married her parson by this time I suppose,”—­she said—­“Of course it’s perfectly scandalous.  Lady Beaulyon was quite disgusted when she heard of it—­such an alliance for a Vancourt!  And Mr. and Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay tell me that the man Walden is quite an objectionable person—­positively boorish!  It’s dreadful really!  But who could ever have imagined she would recover from that hunting spill?  Wentworth Glynn said she was crippled for life.  He told me so himself.”

“Well, he was wrong evidently,”—­said Roxmouth, curtly.  “English surgeons are very clever, but they are not always infallible.  This time an Italian has beaten them.”

“Perhaps she was not so seriously injured as the local man at St. Rest made her out to be,”—­pursued her ladyship reflectively.

Roxmouth said nothing.  She studied his face with amused scrutiny.

“Perhaps it was another little ruse to get rid of you and your wooing,”—­she went on—­“Dear me!  What an extraordinary contempt Maryllia always had for you to be sure!”

He moved restlessly, and she smiled—­a hard little smile.

“I guess you’re hankering after her still!” she hinted.

“Your remarks are in rather bad taste,”—­he rejoined, coldly, helping himself to another glass of wine.

She rose from her chair, and came round the table to where he sat, laying a heavily jewelled hand on his shoulder.

“Well, you’ve got me!” she said—­“And all I’m worth!  And you ‘love’ me, don’t you?”

She laughed a little.

He looked full at her,—­at her worn, hard, artificially got-up face, her fashionable frock, and her cold, expressionless eyes.

“Oh yes!” he answered, drily—­“I ‘love’ you!  You know I do.  We understand each other!”

“I guess we do!” she thought to herself as she left him—­“And when I’m tired of being called ‘My lady’ or ‘Your Grace’ I’ll divorce him!  And I’ll take care he isn’t a penny the richer!  There’s always that game to play, and you bet the Smart Set know how to play it!”

But of the ways, doings or saying of the Smart Set the village of St. Rest knows little and cares less.  It dozes peacefully with the sun in its eyes, year in and year out, under the shadow of the eastern hills, with its beloved ‘Passon’ and now its equally beloved ‘Passon’s wife,’ as king and queen of its tiny governmental concerns, drawing health and peace, contentment and tranquillity from the influences of nature, unspoilt by contact with the busier and wearier world.  ‘Passon Walden’s’ wedding-day was the chief great historic event of its conscious life.  For on that never-to-be-forgotten and glorious occasion, the tenantry of Abbot’s