And there are those who can in no way understand that some few men are born who stand apart, by the very grandeur of Nature's plan--men of whom it is true to say that "after making him the mould was broken," and of whom the average law can neither judge aright nor understand. In his childhood, in his boyhood, and in his manhood Parnell was "apart." I was the one human being admitted into the inner sanctuaries of his soul, with all their intricate glooms and dazzling lights; mine was not the folly to judge, but the love to understand. {312} CHAPTER XXX MARRIAGE, ILLNESS AND DEATH "_O gentle wind that bloweth south To where my love re-paireth, Convey a kiss to his dear mouth And tell me how he fareth._" --OLD BALLAD. "_He that well and rightly considereth his own works will find little cause to judge hardly of another._"--THOMAS À KEMPIS. On June 24th, 1891, Mr. Parnell drove over to Steyning to see that all the arrangements for our marriage at the registrar's office there on the next day were complete. Mr. Edward Cripps, the registrar, had everything in order, and it was arranged that we should come very early so as to baffle the newspaper correspondents, who had already been worrying Mr. Cripps, and who hung about our house at Brighton with an inconvenient pertinacity. We had given Mr. Parnell's servant elaborate orders to await us, with Dictator in the phaeton, at a short distance from the house about eleven o'clock on the 25th, and told him he would be required as a witness at our wedding. This little ruse gave us the early morning of the 25th clear, as the newspaper men soon had these instructions out of the discomfited young man, who had been told not to talk to reporters. On June 25th I was awakened at daybreak by my lover's tapping at my door and calling to me: "Get up, get up, it is time to be married!" Then a humming and excitement began through the house as the maids flew {313} about to get us and breakfast ready "in time," before two of them, Phyllis Bryson, my very dear personal maid--who had put off her own marriage for many years in order to remain with me--and my children's old nurse, drove off to catch the early train to Steyning, where they were to be witnesses of our marriage. Phyllis was so determined to put the finishing touches to me herself that she was at last hustled off by Parnell, who was in a nervous fear that everyone would be late but the newspaper men. Phyllis was fastening a posy at my breast when Parnell gently but firmly took it from her and replaced it with white roses he had got for me the day before. Seeing her look of disappointment he said, "She must wear mine to-day, Phyllis, but she shall carry yours, and you shall keep them in remembrance; now you must go!"