“If you had heard your mother’s cry when she saw you go up the aisle, and had seen her face—as long as I live I shall never forget either!—you would have no need to ask such a question,” said Mrs. Fellowes, with gentle gravity. “I thought she looked rather different from usual, and I fancied my father’s arm trembled when I held it. So—so!” she said with a half-mocking smile as she fastened the top button of her glove, “so marriage is so solemn and sacred a subject that it has actually touched the human part of those two people! Ah, Mary, here I am, ready for my new life—do you like me? The outside is satisfactory, is it not? It is quite pleasant to feel so like a whited sepulchre!” she said to Mrs. Fellowes as they went down the stairs, “it excites me.” CHAPTER XXIII. WHEN the two drove away on the first stage of their experiment, Mr. and Mrs. Waring, the Rector and Mrs. Fellowes, Dacre and a few others stood watching them from the great stone steps of the hall. Mrs. Fellowes was reflecting with mixed feelings on Gwen’s good-bye to her mother, which by chance she had witnessed. The girl had already, in the face of everyone, bidden her a quiet and emotionless farewell, but just at the last she had swept round suddenly, as if she were driven, and had caught the little dazed creature—a deal too young to be her mother—in her arms, and had given her an imperative hug of the volcanic order. As it was a first experience, no one could blame the little woman from shrinking visibly from it, and, when it was over, for escaping with a sigh to the side of her husband, and slipping her hand into his with the air of one who has escaped a danger. Gwen allowed one flash of angry pain to shoot from her eyes, then she walked grandly out of the house with her hand quite properly on her father’s arm, which Dacre took good care to have in readiness. “Dacre!” said Mrs. Fellowes, as soon as they were well off, “we must get rid of these people. I am sure we have all done our duty by them, and your father and mother have, very obviously, had enough of them.” “I am ready to swear that Admiral Trowe has had a good sight too much of the governor. He has been hammering into him the life and blow-up of that gray rock at Henty’s they are always grubbing at, for a solid ten minutes. Now he’s on selection, and the Admiral has murder in his eye—look!” “Yes, and your mother, see how tired she looks! She is telling Mrs. Irvine the most wonderful new facts about babies. Mrs. Irvine has ten, two sets of twins among them, and she is the champion mother of the parish. Dacre, you cover one wing, I shall manœuvre the other, there’s not a minute to lose.”