“Oh, it doesn’t matter what ladies. Two of the very best sort. I know they noticed it, because I heard them talking about it. We were all standing in the upper hall and were all crowded into a passage leading to the room where the bride was dressing. It was before the alarm had gone around of what had been discovered in the library, and we were all impatient enough for the appearance of the bride, who, we had been told, intended to wear the old point in which her great-grandmother was married. I have a weakness for old point and I was determined to stand where I could see her come out, even if I lost sight of the ceremony itself. But it would have been tedious enough waiting in that close hall if the ladies behind me had not kept up a conversation, which I, of course, pretended not to hear. I remember it, every word, for it was my sole amusement for half an hour. What was it? Oh, it was about that same bouquet, which, by the way, I had the privilege of staring at all the time they chatted. For the boy who brought it had not been admitted into Miss Moore’s room, and, not knowing what else to do with it, was lingering before her door, with the great streamers falling from his hands, and the lilies making the whole place heavy with a sickening perfume. From what I heard the ladies say, he had been standing there an hour, and the timid knock he gave from time to time produced in me an odd feeling which those ladies behind me seemed to share. “‘It’s a shame!’ I heard one of them cry. ‘Veronica Moore has no excuse for such thoughtlessness. It is an hour now that she has been shut up in her room alone. She won’t have even her maid in. She prefers to dress alone, she says. Peculiar in a bride, isn’t it? But one thing is certain: she can not put on her veil without help. She will have to call some one in for that.’ At which the other volunteered that the Moores were all queer, and that she didn’t envy Francis Jeffrey. ‘What! not with fifty thousand a year to lighten her oddities?’ returned her companion with a shrug which communicated itself to me, so closely were we packed together. ‘I have a son who could bear with them under such circumstances.’ Indeed she has, and all Washington knows it, but the remark passed without comment, for they had not yet exhausted the main event, and the person they now attacked was Miss Tuttle. ‘Why doesn’t she come and see that that bouquet is taken in? I declare it’s not decent. Mr. Jeffrey would not feel complimented if he knew the fate of those magnificent lilies and roses. I presume he furnished the bouquet.’