Jeannie was perhaps a little different; she looked quite radiantly happy, and not self-conscious at all; she said her own word very audibly, and on the way down from the altar she caught sight of Miss Clara, stopped the whole procession to kiss her in the face of the assembled congregation, and all the Avesham contingent said to their neighbours, “Who is that woman in black?” Afterward there was a reunion at Bolton Street, and Collingwoods mixed in a manner which did not suggest chemical affinity with Aveshams, and each found the other just a shade trying. The bridegroom’s mother, for instance, was, to say the least of it, puzzled with Lady Tamar, the bride’s aunt, who smoked a cigarette with the whole of the close looking on, and really did not seem to be aware how unusually she was behaving. It was idle to explain, and Lady Tamar, on her side, at the end of the interview, said to herself, “Poor Jeannie!” However, as neither knew (or cared) what the other thought of her, there was no harm done. It was lucky indeed that Mrs. Collingwood was not aware what the world in general said about Lady Tamar; lucky also that Lady Tamar did not know the innermost truth about Mrs. Collingwood! She believed that the whole world was made to amuse her, and, if she had known, Mrs. Collingwood would have amused her so much that her inextinguishable laughter might have caused offence. Colonel Raymond alone, perhaps, was of all present in the seventh heaven of bliss; he did not talk to anybody, but he listened with both ears, and stocked himself with distinguished names. He had an excellent memory and the Peerage. Thus his old cronies were likely to hear more of collateral Aveshams. Both bride and bridegroom effaced themselves from the party until their appearance was necessary. They were to leave Wroxton by a train soon after four, and the interval between their mingling with the party and the last possible moment of catching their train was short. Jack held that wedding parties were a barbarity, Jeannie that it was better not to be a principal actor; and, as a matter of fact, they sat quietly in the nursery and amused the baby till Arthur warned them it was time to go to their train. For both there was rice and slippers, for each there was the other. The family who had taken Merton were in London, and were delighted that the two should spend their honeymoon there. Merton was only a couple of stations from Wroxton, and they arrived soon after five. All about her were the dear familiarities of childhood, by her the crown of her womanhood. Nowhere else, she thought, could Jack have known her as well as here.