It perplexed him beyond measure, but it seemed to him that her will was law, and he must obey. For more than five years he had cherished a dog-like devotion, of which she had been apparently quite unconscious. Yet now she wanted him, and he could not choose but obey her orders. First, however, he must contrive to show the paper to old Sarah, and this he succeeded in doing while the bridal party were leaving the church, at which time the crowd had eyes for none but the chief actors in the ceremony. Quickly running her eye over the bit of paper he had slipped into her hand, for the old woman’s sight was excellent in spite of her years, Sarah grinned in intense and evident amusement as she thrust it back upon him. Stephen was angry with her for her inexplicable merriment, but there was no time for controversy now; and abruptly leaving the group about the doors, he strode away in the direction of Grayling. “Your daughter’s a handsome girl, sir,” the Duke observed to Sir Philip Cranstoun, as he and his host, with Lady Northborough and her son, sat in the vast and gloomy dining-hall of the Chase, facing that sardonic gray portrait in armor which had so greatly interested Lord Carthew on the occasion of his first visit to the house--“a very fine girl indeed. And I don’t wonder that Carthew here had his head turned. Can’t think where she gets her looks from. You’re not a beauty yourself, Cranstoun, and we Douglases have never been good-looking. Only known her a month, eh, Carthew? Well, well, marry in haste and repent at leisure, you know!” “Now, Duke, you are just too cruel!” exclaimed Lady Northborough, as the old gentleman wheezed with elderly laughter over his own humor. “Stella is quite too lovely, and would certainly have been the most beautiful _débutante_ at the Drawing-Room this year but for her unhappy mourning. Now mind, Claud, dear, that you get her quite well at Northborough Castle, and on the yacht. Though, really, she doesn’t look a bit ill now; but that’s on account of her lovely complexion.” “Handsome is as handsome does,” persisted the old gentleman, teasingly. “Cranstoun, I am a judge of character, and I shouldn’t be surprised if Carthew here had caught a Tartar in your child and my granddaughter.”