So he sat down, filled from top to toe with a wicked elation at his own success in upsetting everybody's plans, and indited the following epistle to his son, as a sort of top note to his man[oe]uvres: "Dear Boy,--You will be glad to hear that Fantine Le Grand becomes Lady Drummuir this evening at six o'clock. We have agreed that this is better than hunting two thousand pounds through the capitals of Europe, even in company with you. So that is settled. For the rest, I enclose a cheque for two thousand pounds on my bankers. You owe this to Marrion Paul, who is worth the whole batch of you put together. I cannot conceive how you were such a confounded ass as not to see this, but to let her slip through your fingers and leave the poor girl to face the insults of the neighbours, as she is doing; for, of course, her escapade is the talk of the town. My dear Marmaduke, I am ashamed of you!--Your affectionate father, DRUMMUIR. "Your step-mamma sends you her duty." He chuckled over the production which he calculated told enough to rouse anger and not enough to satisfy curiosity, and which, while being a regular facer, left the relations between them much as they were. After which he had himself wheeled to the big hall where the ceremony was to take place, and amused himself vastly by superintending decorations and mystifying Peter, who came in from a day after wild duck, to find the house upside down. It was the sort of situation in which his lordship revelled, and he became almost lachrymose over reminiscences of the past with Jack Jardine, who never moved a muscle, but took the ceremony as a matter of course. Only when Peter, less experienced, asked him what the deuce the old man meant by playing the goat at a moment's notice, he shook his head solemnly, and replied-- "Your father is a very remarkable man, Peter, a very remarkable man indeed." So at the appointed hour the wheeled-chair took its place, its occupant duly bedecked with the white flower of a blameless life in his buttonhole, before the improvised sort of altar which bore on it a beautiful bunch of late roses; and the Reverend Patrick Bryce with a colour in his usually pale cheeks sailed in very stiff in his starched bands and rustling academical black robes and took his place before it. The bride, composed and cheerful, looking quite virginal in white and orange blossoms, appeared on the arm of Colonel Compton and followed by her bridesmaids, also in white. There were, however, but two of them, for Margaret Muir boldly stalked in separately, attired in a fine new purple gown, and took a place sedately beside Jack Jardine, who stared at her incredulously; for her father's eyes were upon her and scowling disapproval at her disobedience to his commands. She seemed quite indifferent to this, and nodded an encouraging smile to her sisters, who, poor souls, were the only people who showed by their red eyes and general emotion that the occasion was serious and not a mere farce.