"It was a case of vaulting ambition which o'er-leaps itself. The Colonel wanted a quiet wedding. I think he would have preferred the registrar's office--no church-going, or fuss of any kind--but the lady, to whom matrimony was a new idea, willed otherwise. So she decided that the nest in St. John's Wood was not spacious enough to accommodate the wedding guests. She sent her invitations far and wide, and ordered a _recherché_ breakfast at an hotel in Brook Street. Of the sixty people she expected about fifteen appeared, and there was a rowdy air about those select few, male and female, which was by no means congenial to the broad glare of day. Night birds, every one--painted cheeks--dyed moustachios--tremulous hands--a foreshadowing of del. trem. in the very way some of them swallowed their champagne. I was sorry for Fishky, who looked lovely in her white satin frock and orange-blossoms, but who had a piteous droop about the corners of her lips, like a child whose birthday feast has gone wrong. I felt still sorrier for the Colonel--a proud man debased by low surroundings." "He will take her off the stage, I suppose," suggested the other. "Naturally, he will try to do so. He'll make a good fight for it, I dare say; but whether he can keep Fishky from the footlights is an open question. I know he's in debt, and I don't very clearly see how they are to live." "She is very fond of him, isn't she?" "Yes, I believe so. She jilted Hamleigh, a man who worshipped her, to take up with Luscomb, so I suppose it was a case of real affection." "I was told that she was in very bad health--consumptive?" "That sort of little person is always dying," answered the other carelessly. "It is a part of the _métier_--the Marguerite Gauthier, drooping lily kind of young woman. But I believe this one _is_ sickly." Christabel heard every word of this conversation, heard and understood for the first time that her renunciation of her lover had been useless--that the reparation she had deemed it his duty to make, was past making--that the woman to whose wounded character she had sacrificed her own happiness was false and unworthy. She had been fooled--betrayed by her own generous instincts--her own emotional impulses. It would have been better for her and for Angus if she had been more worldly-minded--less innocent of the knowledge of evil. She had blighted her own life, and perhaps his, for an imaginary good. Nothing had been gained to any one living by her sacrifice.