Neither shall I linger over the details of the engagement and the wedding. For all that was important about either I refer you to the newspapers of London and New York. They gave everything that makes a snob’s eyes glisten and a snob’s mouth water. My wife has somewhere--she knows exactly where--a scrapbook, and my daughter has another of the same kind. Those scrapbooks are strongly bound and the pages are of the heaviest time- and wear-resisting paper. In them are pasted columns on columns of lists of titles, of descriptions of jewels and dresses, of enumerations of wedding gifts. Margot received things costing small fortunes from people she barely knew well enough to invite. They gave in the hope--the good hope--of gaining the valuable favor of the Marchioness of Crossley, a great lady by reason of her title, a greater lady by reason of the ancientness of the Massingford family, and at the top and summit of greatness by reason of her wealth. That last item, by the way, was vastly overestimated. Everyone assumed that Crossley had sold much more dearly. No one but those intimately concerned dreamed what a bargain I had got. You may be picturing a sordid affair, redolent of the stenches of commercialism. If you are, gentle reader, you are showing yourself unworthy of your own soulfulness, unworthy of the elegant society into which I have introduced you. I have been giving simply the plain facts--a mere skeleton upon which you, versed in society columns and society novels, and skilled in the art of hiding ugly truths under pretty lies, may readily drape the flesh and the garments of sentimentality and snobbishness. You will then have the truth as it appeared to the world--a handsome, manly groom, every inch of him the patrician; a wondrous lovely, innocent, pure young bride, looking the worthy mate of the great noble she had won with her beauty and her sweetness; a background of magnificent houses and equipages, of grand society people, of lackeys in livery without number; an atmosphere of luxury, refinement, perfumed with the fairest flowers and the most delicate artificial scents. You are seeing also the high and noble motives of all concerned--the joy of parents in a daughter sentimentally wooed and won to happiness; the generous and kindly feelings of all the friends; the lavish and affectionate overflowing of costly gifts; above all, the ecstatic young couple wrapped up in their love for each other. Flesh up and beautify the skeleton to your taste, gentle reader. You will not go amiss.