Mrs. Folyat set all this before Basil and Minna, and excitedly they planned a double wedding in two months' time. Mrs. Folyat saw in this project the chance of wiping out the stain of Annette's offence. * * * Francis was approached that very night. He was for waiting. They could sell no more of their Potsham houses, or there would be no provision for their old age. (He had already begun to think dimly of retirement to the softer south and a garden.) Mrs. Folyat, however, had set her heart on the plan. She wheedled, cajoled, coaxed, scolded, suggested scheme after scheme, until Francis agreed to sell his life-insurance policy, but on condition that the proceeds were divided equally between his children with the exception of Leedham, who was married to a wealthy Portuguese widow, ten years his senior, in Rio . . . Mrs. Folyat pounced on that, and next morning saw to it that he began to take the necessary steps. Twelve hundred pounds were raised by this means. Serge disapproved and disclaimed his share, so that the rest had two hundred and forty pounds each. Frederic took an office near Serge's studio, engaged two clerks, and was regarded as sufficiently established to enter into the state of matrimony. There was an entertaining wedding. Bennett and Annette were invited and formally taken back into the fold. Basil and Minna Haslam went to London to spend their honeymoon in the studio they had taken in Chelsea. Frederic and Jessie Folyat took a house next door but one to James Lawrie's. There were many tears shed over the brides, and after Mrs. Folyat had delivered herself of a sort of funeral oration _à la_ Bossuet, Minna whispered to Serge: "Ma always did love a theatrical performance." "'Your son's your son till he gets him a wife,'" said Mrs. Folyat to Frederic, and then to Minna she completed the tag, "'Your daughter's your daughter the rest of your life.'" It was a very exciting and a very happy day in the Folyat household. Mrs. Folyat chattered all the evening. Mary and Gertrude said not a word and went silently off to bed, so that Francis was compelled to escort his wife to her room and perform the innumerable little services she required. "Doesn't the house feel empty?" she said. Francis mumbled. "I'm sure Annette is going to have a baby." "M-m-m-m." "I thought I was never going to be a grandmother." "You always were impatient," said Francis in an unexpectedly loud voice. That was criticism, which she could not abide. Francis rued his precipitancy. He was very unhappy about Frederic, but, he asked himself, what could he do? What could he do? There was no doubt that Jessie loved Frederic, but did not that, in itself, the more dangerously expose her to his folly and weak selfishness? He hardly heard his wife's words as she went maundering on. In the darkness he prayed that all might be, as he tried to believe, for the best. XXVII GERTRUDE MAKES THE BEST OF IT