Trumble bounded in, shouting that everything was attended to, except instructions to Enfield, whom he pounded wildly upon the back. He began signing papers; a stenographer was called from another room of his offices; and there was half an hour of rapid-fire. Cora's bag came, and she gave the bearer the note for Laura; another bag was brought for Wade; and both bags were carried down to the automobile the bridegroom had left waiting in the street. Last, came a splendid cluster of orchids for the bride to wear, and then Wade, with his arm about her, swept her into the corridor, and the stirred Enfield was left to his own beating heart, and the fresh, radiant vision of this startling new acquaintance: the sweet mystery of the look she had thrown back at him over his employer's shoulder at the very last. "Do not forget _me_!" it had seemed to say. "We shall come back--some day." The closed car bore the pair to the little grim marriage-shop quickly enough, though they were nearly run down by a furious police patrol automobile, at a corner near the Richfield Hotel. Their escape was by a very narrow margin of safety, and Cora closed her eyes. Then she was cross, because she had been frightened, and commanded Wade cavalierly to bid the driver be more careful. Wade obeyed sympathetically. "Of course, though, it wasn't altogether his fault," he said, settling back, his arm round his lady's waist. "It's an outrage for the police to break their own rules that way. I guess they don't need to be in a hurry any more than _we_ do!" The Justice made short work of it. As they stood so briefly before him, there swept across her vision the memory of what she had always prophesied as her wedding:--a crowded church, "The Light That Breathed O'er Eden" from an unseen singer; then the warm air trembling to the Lohengrin march; all heads turning; the procession down the aisle; herself appearing--climax of everything--a delicious and brilliant figure: graceful, rosy, shy, an imperial prize for the groom, who in these foreshadowings had always been very indistinct. The picture had always failed in outline there: the bridegroom's nearest approach to definition had never been clearer than a composite photograph. The truth is, Cora never in her life wished to be married. But she was. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Valentine Corliss had nothing to do but to wait for the money his friend Antonio would send him by cable. His own cable, anticipating his letter, had been sent yesterday, when he came back to the hotel, after lunching in the country with Cora.