“How about Bill Grant?” I persisted. “Has anything been heard from him?” “He came back about an hour ago,” she said. “Perhaps Belden could find him for you.” I gave up further inquiry at that, mounted my crutches and joined Mr. Smith. It still lacked a minute or two of our appointed hour with Mrs. Corbin. A car came coasting down the drive and I stared at it with a curiosity that was admissible, I think, since it happened to be my own. I hadn’t ordered it, certainly. My interest shot up to excitement when I saw who was getting out of it. “It’s young Mills, the parson from the village,” I told Mr. Smith in answer to his inquiring glance. “I gave Bill Grant a card to him this morning. Do you suppose _that’s_ what our old friend is up to?” “I never entertained a doubt of it,” he said. The three of us, Mr. Smith, the parson, and I, went up-stairs together to the old lady’s sitting-room. Young Mills, though perfectly equal to the situation, was obviously rather tense and his manner was highly professional. We found, already gathered in the room, Bill Grant and Judy, Alec, Victoria and Punch. Mrs. Corbin sat just as I had seen her at our earlier meeting that morning. Miss Digby stood behind her chair. No one was speaking when we came in, but I guessed from Victoria’s flushed cheeks that, despairing of my aid, she’d tried to get a hearing for her own plan and failed. “These two young people,” Mrs. Corbin said, indicating Judy and Bill, “tell me they’re fond of each other and want to be married. They’ve had the grace to ask for my consent, and I’ve given it. So they’re going to be married now. After they’re married, if there’s anything left to talk about, we can talk.” Victoria’s silence at this was as eloquent as the best of Cicero’s orations against Catiline, but the old woman remained unmoved by it. “Is there any one else, any one in the house,” she asked Judy, “whom you’d like to invite to your wedding?” “I’d like Belden,” the girl answered. And Punch was despatched to fetch him. We waited in silence until Punch came back with him. The old butler’s face was by no means inexpressive, but the emotion most conspicuously absent from it was surprise. “Now, Mr. Mills,” said old Mrs. Corbin. And so Judy was married to her lover, without the aid of a string orchestra on the lawn or a light opera chorus of bridesmaids--not in any respect as the event had been rehearsed the afternoon before. But Judy seemed completely satisfied with it. She turned, I was glad to see, from her husband’s embrace to her mother, and Victoria, after a moment during which my heart had stood still, gathered the girl up with a sob of surrender into her arms. I don’t think there was a word said between them, but words weren’t needed. The deplorably long strain was relaxed--temporarily, anyhow. Judy turned away with her eyes full of tears. “Where’s the guardian angel?” she asked, with a shaky laugh. “I can’t see very well.”