But now he stepped forward to meet her with a smile that enlivened his whole face, even his eyes. The service flowed on. With that air of sulky geniality which represented his most urbane manner, Willoughby Hewston gave away the bride. The responses were duly made, and Mr. and Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth turned to walk through an aisle of smiling and nodding friends. At that moment the mellow October sunlight fell through the stained windows enwrapping Perdita in a regal and impalpable vesture of scarlet and gold; and again a murmur of admiration rippled and echoed at this fresh revelation of her beauty. She had been pale as she walked up the aisle, but now her color had risen and the crimson on her brown cheek was the hue of a jacqueminot rose. Her hair, a deep chestnut at the temples, flowed into copper, dark in the hollows, gold where it caught the light. Her coloring was a harmony of all soft, warm, dusky shades, and one looked to the eyes to focus these tints in light or darkly rich topaz; but Perdita's eyes were gray, handed down perhaps from those Irish kings to whom her father had laughingly traced his descent. "Lucky girl!" murmured Alice Wilstead an hour later to the group of Hepworth's intimate friends who sat together at one table during the breakfast that followed the wedding. "Just think of it. He has no family encumbrances. Never an 'in-law' will she have to cope with." It never struck her that Hepworth's little circle of close friends had gradually assumed about all of the intrusive and proprietary prerogatives of the nearest and most affectionate relatives. Alice Wilstead was a widow, dark, slender, piquant, versed in the secrets of grace and the art of wearing her jewels so that they accentuated her sparkling eyes and her one precious dimple without eclipsing them. Warmly sympathetic and impulsive, she had been overcome by the vision of Perdita's isolation as the girl walked up the aisle on the grudging arm of Willoughby Hewston; and had pressed her handkerchief lightly to her eyes, a moment of emotion viewed with callous interest by a misinterpreting world which regarded it as a last tear shed for a lost opportunity, a shattered hope. "Well," said Hewston, finishing his sweetbreads and preparing to begin on the next course, "it went off very well. I was all right, wasn't I?" "You were perfect, dear," his wife hastened to assure him, "and it was a beautiful wedding." Mrs. Hewston was gray and pink and plump like her husband; and this morning her grayness and pinkness and plumpness were underlined, thrown into high relief by a violet gauze gown, heavily spangled in silver. Isabel Hewston resembled nothing so much as a comfortable, placid, fireside cat, purry and complacent. If she possessed claws, which is doubtful, they were always well concealed. "Yes, a beautiful wedding and a beautiful bride," she murmured, with a little sighing inflection habitual to her, "so young, so--"