Just as we drove out of Steyning we passed the newspaper men arriving at a gallop, and we peered out doubtfully at them, fearing they would turn and come back after us. But I let Dictator have his head, and, though they pulled up, they knew that pursuit was hopeless. My husband looked back round the hood of the phaeton, and the groom called out delightedly, "They've give up, and gone on to Mr. Cripps, sir." On our return to Walsingham Terrace we had to run the gauntlet between waiting Pressmen up the steps to the house, but at my husband's imperious "Stand back; let Mrs. Parnell pass! Presently, presently; I'll see you presently!" they fell back, and we hid ourselves in the house and sat down to our dainty little wedding breakfast. Parnell would not allow me to have a wedding cake, because he said he would not be able to bear seeing me eat our wedding cake without him, and, as I knew, the very sight of a rich cake made him ill. Meanwhile the reporters had taken a firm stand at the front door, and were worrying the servants to exasperation. One, a lady reporter for an American newspaper, being more enterprising than the rest, got into the house adjoining ours, which I also rented at that time, and came through the door of communication on the balcony into my bedroom. Here she was found by Phyllis, and as my furious little maid was too small to turn the American lady out, she slipped out of the door and locked it, to prevent further intrusion. Then she came down to us in the dining-room, found {316} on the way that the cook had basely given in to bribery, having "Just let one of the poor gentlemen stand in the hall," and gave up the battle in despair--saying, "Will Mrs. O'Shea see him, Mr. ---- wants to know?" "Phyllis!" exclaimed my husband in a horrified voice, "what do you mean? _Who_ is Mrs. O'Shea?" Poor Phyllis gave one gasp at me and fled in confusion. Then my King saw some of the newspaper people, and eased their minds of their duty to their respective papers. The lady from America he utterly refused to see, as she had forced herself into my room, but, undaunted, she left vowing that she would cable a better "interview" than any of them to her paper. They were kind enough to send it to me in due course, and I must admit that even if not exactly accurate, it was distinctly "bright." It was an illustrated "interview," and Parnell and I appeared seated together on a stout little sofa, he clad in a fur coat, and I in a dangerously _décolleté_ garment, diaphanous in the extreme, and apparently attached to me by large diamonds. My sedate Phyllis had become a stage "grisette" of most frivolous demeanour, and my poor bedroom--in fact, the most solid and ugly emanation of Early Victorian virtue I have ever had bequeathed to me--appeared to an interested American State as the "very utmost" in fluffy viciousness that could be evolved in the united capitals of the demi-mondaine.