Neither on this nor on any other occasion did Lord and Lady Bute care to remain away from their own home longer than was absolutely necessary. Bute wrote a few days afterwards from Lord Glasgow's seat in Fife, where they were paying a short visit: {123} We quitted London--as usual, with much satisfaction--the very day after the ceremony, which was decorously done, and the mob of sightseers was, I am inclined to think, better behaved (anyhow inside the church) than at our marriage five years ago. Lord Beaconsfield, who was in the front row next to Princess Louise, sat throughout the function wrapped in his long drab overcoat, and gazing at the altar with Sphinx-like immobility. He told me at the reception afterwards that he had thought the music (which at Norfolk's express wish was plain-chant throughout) "strangely impressive." The bridegroom, by the way, forgot to order a carriage to take them away after the ceremony, but finding his father-in-law's carriage at the church door, handed in the bride with great presence of mind. They were just driving off when Mr. Hastings came out fuming, and insisted on a seat in his own carriage. So they all drove away together, quite in violation, I imagine, of the established etiquette on such occasions. [Sidenote: 1877, Burning of Mountstuart] Bute's hopes of spending the winter of 1877-1878 quietly at his old home near Rothesay were rudely frustrated by the catastrophe of December 3, 1877, when Mountstuart House was practically burnt to the ground, only the two wings (one of them containing the little private chapel) escaping the flames. He wrote early in December, in reply to a letter of condolence: Many thanks for the kind expressions in your letter. It has all been, of course, very distressing. Nearly all moveables (including books and pictures) were most fortunately saved,[5] but the confusion is {124} and has been so great that I am practically bookless for a while, and feel like a snail that has lost its shell. But the Breviary is slowly proceeding.