But in the meantime the spectacle before their eyes was quite different from those evoked by their imaginations. It might be true that Lovel looked lean and stern, and that Olver followed the ceremony in that slanting way within his little round mirror, but the words the clergyman uttered were the same that they were accustomed to hear at all respectable unions, and as for Daisy, she was the picture of all a bride ought to be, muslin flounces and coyness, and if her figure was a little oddly thickened, why, that also was a thing that had been seen before at village weddings. She looked pleased with her young man; she kept glancing proudly at his height; she sniggered with content as he repeated the beautiful threadbare words after the priest, repeated them gravely and firmly, but as though he were utterly indifferent to the obligations they imposed upon him. There was nothing very startlingly unusual about the wedding. True, neither Daisy’s father nor her mother were present, but the whole village knew that Lovel was marrying the girl because he had got her into trouble, and it was not likely that the Morlands, steady and decent folk, would be present to give the sanction of their approval. Perhaps later on, when the child was born, they might come round; for the moment, no doubt,--and very naturally,--they were sore over both the cause of the marriage and the son-in-law imposed upon them. Daisy did not seem to care. Ever since the publication of her banns she had gone about flaunting as though her marriage were a reason for pride rather than for shame and apology. Not that the village saw much shame in circumstances so common. It had, rather, a certain respect for Daisy, who, having set her heart on the gipsy,--a strange taste, but that was her business,--had at last got him to the altar. There was a tacit convention that a girl was justified in using all her weapons if she could not otherwise carry her point: and there was also, in the present instance, a peculiar satisfaction in feeling that the gipsy had been worsted. So grand, so stuck-up, Nicholas Lovel, but a girl had got the better of him in the end.