And so it happened that he led the massive satin creature up the aisle in the wake of that mystic procession, outwardly a mask of courtly solicitude, but within him the premonitions of whirling mania. He was literally faint with hunger; the strong sweetness of the lilies and other aromatic plants disposed about the church for its decoration affected him almost unpleasantly with their cloying odours, and the menacing fear that with every step he was involving himself further in a list of crimes so confused as to be, perhaps, yet uncatalogued in the annals of the law, shadowed his soul. "_I, Emily Hildegarde, take thee, Richard_----" the tones of the frost-like bride were as clear and silvery as her veil. Richard would encounter a certain amount of self-possession, it appeared. But perhaps young women were all self-possessed, now. Antony could not recall a bride that had trembled in his experience. The solemn service hastened to its conclusion. Suppose the marriage should prove to have been invalid because of a fraudulent and criminal usher? It might be possible. . . . "I am sorry, but the church is filled," he murmured suavely to a beseeching violet-scented pair, marvelling at his own self-command. It was over. Mendelssohn announced it and his echoes shook the windows. Two more hopeful voyagers had launched out upon life, arm in arm down the smiling, tearful aisle; two more combatants with armour scarcely buckled smiled boastfully on entering the field, nor noted that it was strewn with the breakage of their predecessors! Thus cynically did Antony muse as the glowing pair swept by, when all at once a soft voice murmured close to his ear: "Ask for Mrs. Williamson's carriage!" She was gone. They were all gone, in a perfumed cloud of mauve, and with a bound he cleared the three entrance steps and ran to the crowd of vehicles that began to move about. "Is Mrs. Williamson's carriage here?" he called loudly, and, as a one-horse coupe drew up to him, the odour of sweet peas was wafted across his nostrils and she swept in beside him, jealously guarding her skirts from harmful contacts. Obedient to her imperative gesture, he took his seat beside her, and feeling unable to combine into any intelligible sentence his emotions and apprehensions, gazed questioningly into her flushed and sparkling countenance. She pressed the sweet peas to her breast, and as the carriage moved off at a rapid pace she looked deep into his eyes and spoke. "Wasn't she lovely?" she said dreamily. Antony opened his mouth and closed it, opened it again and again closed it. For a moment it seemed to him that his mind was reeling from its foundations; that perhaps, after all, he was the legitimate usher of Emily's wedding and that this lustrous-eyed creature with him was Gertrude . . . and then a wholesome rage came to his assistance.