As might have been expected, no such thing happened. A letter came from Mims by return of post, full of congratulation and excitement, and stating that a consignment of wedding presents had been despatched. In fact, Mr. Rosenberg, senior, was so transported with gratitude to Virginia for refraining from becoming his daughter-in-law that he bestowed on her a set of ermine furs fit for a princess. Mims sent a mirror in a silver frame; Gerald a pendant. Except for a silver cream-jug from Mr. Askew, these were the only presents the girl received. Tony and Pansy almost broke their hearts at being unable to give anything, until Mrs. Mynors, roused to most unexpected generosity, allowed them to go shares with her in pressing upon Virgie's acceptance some articles of her mother's silver toilet set--brush, comb, and so on. Small time had the bride for reflection, until the dawn of the fatal day. The rain had changed the weather. The heat was no longer great--in fact, the day was chilly and grey, with a gusty little wind which blew up the dust in sudden puffs. The bride's toilette, of pale blue over white, was extremely pretty. As she stood in the drawing-room awaiting the fly which would drive her, her mother and Tony to the church, Mrs. Mynors thought she had never seen a more perfect picture of girlish fairness. Excitement and nervous trepidation had chased the pallor with which a sleepless night had invested her. Up to the last moment she had been at work upon this and that--rearranging her own room to accommodate the professional nurse who would be in charge of Pansy during her treatment, trying to think out and plan everything so exactly that her mother would not be able to upset it afterwards. It was not until nearly two o'clock in the morning that she finished her own packing, and lay down to the thoughts of unspeakable dread with which she now knew that she regarded her approaching marriage. Since the day of Gaunt's visit her mother had hardly spoken to her. Her silence was not exactly hostile, but it was very wounding. It was as though she had suddenly discovered that her daughter was not the girl she took her to be; as if the poor child was abandoning her home and duties to make a rich marriage--leaving her mother to pine in the little villa, cut off from all her own set. There was nothing to take hold of, nothing that Virginia could plead against; it was just an atmosphere of coldness, of pained surprise, but it seemed to the depressed girl to be the last straw.