It is rather a notable arrangement which makes the quickening of life in one of the least natural systems in the world, London society, simultaneous with nature’s great awakening. It presents a suggestion of combined travesty, patronage, and unconscious testimony to that affinity between man and nature which nothing can wholly destroy, which, if worked out with a certain amount of latitude to a fantastic imagination, will have a rather bewildering effect upon the focus of things in general. But it is nevertheless a fact that on this particular day in May very many of the impulses stirring in nature had their strangely distorted counterparts in the impulses of society. Society, like nature, had discarded its winter garments, its winter habits; society, like nature, was restless with fresh beginnings, fresh hopes, fresh tendencies. The resemblance lay on the surface; the contrast was farther to seek. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, and a certain section of society--a gathering, at least, very fairly representative of a certain section--was surging in a good-tempered, aimless, demoralised way in a very fashionable church in Kensington. Some of the demoralisation was due to the occasion--a smart wedding--but the gaiety and the general air of readiness to be pleased which prevailed were as certainly the outcome of the wider spirit of the hour as were the smart spring gowns and the quantities of spring flowers carried or worn by the women. The bridal party had left the church and a general exodus was in progress; progress rendered rather slow by reason of the difficulties attendant on the bringing together of carriages and owners, and involving a considerable crush inside the church door. In the middle of this crush, allowing himself to be pushed and drifted along towards the door, was a man who was apparently too fully occupied in casting keen, comprehensive and reconnoitring looks about him, and in returning the gestures of greeting and welcome which returned his glances on all sides, to take much heed as to the manner or direction of the movement imposed upon him by the moving crowd. It was Marston Loring, and as he finally emerged into the air he was lightly clapped on the shoulder by Lord Garstin, who, a few yards in front of him during their compressed passage out of the building, had waited for him on the pavement. “Glad to see you back, Loring!” he said. “Heard last night of your arrival. How are you?” “Not sorry to be back,” returned Loring nonchalantly, as he shook hands. “I’ve come to the conclusion, though, in the course of the last half-hour, that six months is a mere nothing!” “Are you walking round to the house?” asked Lord Garstin. “So am I. Let me have your news as we go.”