“Oh, part of his pride and independence, I suppose. Besides, why should he keep away? He doesn’t even know that I am going to be married to Miss Cranstoun.” “Not when the fact has been announced in every society paper for the past fortnight?” “I forgot that. But I repeat, little mother, his absence has nothing to do with my marriage, and his conduct in avoiding me hurts me very deeply--unless, indeed, it may arise from illness. But here we are within the Chase enclosure. Splendid timber, isn’t it?” The Chase chapel had been unused, save as a lumber-room, for very many years. The Cranstouns were not a religious race, and the beautiful little mediæval building had been desecrated by being utilized alternately as a barn and a box-room. But for the masses of white flowers on the altar, there was no attempt at decoration, an omission accounted for by Lady Cranstoun’s recent death. Round about the arched graystone doorway of the chapel the servants and retainers of the Chase were assembled, and a faint cheer went up as Lord Carthew helped his mother to descend from the carriage. The Squire was not popular with his tenants any more than with his domestics; he had an absolute genius, indeed, for making himself disliked by all classes among whom he moved. Still, he was all powerful in the district, and great interest was felt in the beautiful daughter whom hardly any one had ever seen outside the Chase enclosure. The crowd round the chapel doors was necessarily a comparatively small one, comprising, as it did, only the tenants of farms and cottages within easy distance of the house, and among them a little, wrinkled, aged woman, neatly dressed in a cotton gown, a shawl, apron, and large straw bonnet, was hardly noticed at first, each group supposing her to belong to some other in the party. There was no way into the chapel save through the Norman archway, and to enter it from the house it was necessary to walk some yards along the terrace. Inside the little building, which smelt musty and disused, two clergymen were waiting: Canon Wrextone, who had been a college contemporary of Sir Philip Cranstoun, and the Rev. John Turner, of Grayling. The Canon was a stout, genial man of the world; the Vicar of Grayling, a pale, ascetic-looking man of middle age. In one of the few high oak pews, too, there sat his Grace the Duke of Lanark, the late Lady Gwendolen’s father, a tall, bent, old gentleman of seventy-five, in deep mourning, with the pallor of eld upon his face, which was almost as colorless as his snow-white hair.