The carriages had nearly blocked the street, and the crowd had completed the block. The church had been well filled by friends and those curious people who always attend weddings. The ceremony had been performed by a dean, assisted by a canon, and an honorary chaplain to Her Majesty. The bride looked lovely and calm as a statue, though the six bridesmaids in pale blue had sobbed softly, and mourned like so many doves, as they moistened their lace handkerchiefs with a briny dew of pearls, almost as bright as those of the handsome lockets they wore--all alike, and the presents of the bridegroom. They were bouquets of the choicest exotics inside the church, and without, for the servants were as liberally supplied as they were with favours; and at last the bridegroom's barouche with four of Newman's best greys had borne the happy pair back to the paternal mansion in Portland Place. There had not been a single hitch, and even her ladyship had held up with a fine Niobe-like expression upon her noble features all through the service. Certainly she had turned faint once at the "I will," but by the help of strong aromatic salts she had recovered herself, and smiled sadly round as if to lend sweetness to the flowers. And now the large party were back in the drawing-room, and preparing to descend to the wedding breakfast. The fashionable pastry-cooks had been ordered to do their best, and this they had done. There were more of those ghastly sugar plaster edifices on the table than usual; more uneatable traps for the unwary; more hollow mockeries, goodly to the eye, but strange to the taste-- preparations that society considers to be _de rigueur_ at a wedding. Still in addition there was all that money could procure; fruit and flowers flourished amidst handsome glass and family plate; the servants were in new liveries, and with plenty of aides stood ready; for Lady Barmouth hoped in marrying one daughter to help on the engagement of the second, saying pensively to herself, "And then I shall feel that I have not lived in vain." "I say, how's the leg?" said a severe-looking gentleman present. "Twinges, eh? Yes, so I suppose. Easy with the good things, mind, or else--you know." "Yes, yes, twinges, doctor," said his lordship, stooping to have a rub at the offending, or rather offended and resenting, limb. "But you are in such a doosed hurry; you always ask me another question before I've scarcely had time to answer the first. I remember, I remember--now, hang him! look at that. Confound that Lord Todd! I wish I was his doctor for a week or two." For the family practitioner had passed on to talk to somebody else, leaving his lordship slowly passing his tongue over his lips, and trying to add another wrinkle to his forehead, as he wondered whether he could smuggle in two or three glasses of champagne without being seen by her ladyship or Doctor Todd. "Ah, my dear Mr Melton," said the latter, "how are you?"