When the bride and bridegroom--on this occasion again by no means overwhelmed--had departed amidst cheers, when the rout of guests had gone, when the triumphal arch was being demolished and the rustics were finishing the beer, she walked with me in the garden while I smoked a cigar. (There’s nothing like a wedding for making you want a cigar.) After we had finished our gossiping about how well everything had gone off--and that things in her house should go off well was very near to Beatrice Gladwin’s heart--we were silent for a while. Then she turned to me and said: “I’m very content, Mr Foulkes.” Her face was calm and peaceful; she did not look so hard. “I’m glad that doing the handsome thing brings content. I wonder if you know how glad I am?” “Yes, I know. You’re a good friend. But you’re making your old mistake. I wasn’t thinking just then of what you call the handsome thing. I was thinking of the chance that I gave myself.” “I never quite understood that,” said I. She gave a little laugh. “But for that ‘handsome thing,’ he’d certainly have asked me--he’d have had to, poor man--me, and not her. And he’d have done it very soon.” I assented--not in words, just in silence and cigar smoke. She looked at me without embarrassment, though she was about to say something that she might well have refused to say to any living being. She seemed to have a sort of pleasure in the confession--at least an impulse to make it that was irresistible. She smiled as she spoke--amused at herself, or, perhaps, at the new idea she would give me of herself. “If he had,” she went on--“if he had made love to me, I couldn’t have refused him--I couldn’t, indeed. And yet I shouldn’t have believed a word he was saying--not a word of love he said. I should have been a very unhappy woman if I hadn’t given myself that chance. You’ve been a little behind the scenes. Nobody else has. I want you to know that I’m content.” She put her hand in mine and gave me a friendly squeeze. “And to-morrow we’ll get back to business, you and I,” she said. THE PRINCE CONSORT