"Look here, Mr. Camacho," Sylvia began. "Oh, don't speak to him, Sylvia," Lily implored. "He can't be spoken to when he's like this. It's a kind of illness, really." Sylvia paid no attention to her, but continued to address the croupier. "If you'll listen to me, Mr. Camacho, instead of behaving like an exasperated toy terrier, you'll find that we both want the same thing." "You shall not have her," the croupier chattered. "I will shoot everybody before you shall have her." "I don't want her," Sylvia screamed. "I've come here to be a bridesmaid or a godmother or any other human accessory to a wedding you like to mention. Take her, my dear man, she's yours." At last Sylvia was able to persuade him that she was not to be regarded as an enemy of his matrimonial intentions, and after a final burst of rage directed against the negresses, whom he ejected from the room, as a housemaid turns a mattress, he made a speech: "I am to marry Lily. We go to Portugal, where I am not to be a croupier, but a gentleman. I excuse my furage. You grant excusals, yes? It is a decomprehence." "He's apologizing," Lily explained in the kind of way one might call attention to the tricks of an intelligent puppy. "She's actually proud of him," Sylvia thought. "But, of course, to her he represents gold and diamonds." The priest, who had grasped that the strain was being relaxed, began to exude smiles and to rub his hands; he sniffed the prospect of a fee so richly that one seemed to hear the notes crackle like pork. Camacho produced the wedding-ring that was even more outshone than wedding-rings usually are by the diamonds of betrothal. "But I can't be married in my dressing-gown," Lily protested. Sylvia felt inclined to say it was the most suitable garment, except a nightgown, that she could have chosen, but in the end, after another discussion, it was decided that the ecclesiastical ceremony should be performed to-morrow in church and that to-day should be devoted to the civil rite. Sylvia promised not to say a word about the departure to Europe. Three days later Sylvia went on board the steamer to make her farewells. She gave Lily a delicate little pistol for a wedding-present; from Lily, in memory of her marriage, she received a box of chocolates.