"At the earliest possible moment," said he. "I must see my friend about it at once. Would you mind waiting for me--say in St. Paul's? And then we'll end our day in the country, after all." "You are good," she said, and laid her hand for a fleeting instant on his arm. "I do think it's good of you to give way about the mock marriage. You know I had really set my heart on it. Now everything will be plain sailing, won't it? And we'll go to Warwick the minute we're mock-married, because my putting my finger on it and Kenilworth ought to count, oughtn't it?" "It shall," he said, gravely. XII WESTMINSTER A WEDDING-DAY--even a real wedding-day--leaves at best but a vague and incoherent memory. To the bridegroom it is a confused whirling recollection of white satin and tears and smiles and flowers and music--or perhaps a dingy room with a long table and an uninterested registrar at the end of it. Edward Basingstoke thought with regret of the flowers and the white satin. If he had accepted her submission, had consented to the real marriage, there should have been white roses by the hundred, and the softest lace and silk to set off her beauty. As it was-- "We shall have to go through some sort of form," he told her, "because of the clerks. If my friend were just to tear out a certificate and give it to us the people in the office. . . . You understand." "Quite," she said. "It'll be rather like a very dingy pretense at a marriage. You won't mind that?" "Of course not. Why should I?" "Then, if you're sure you really want to go through with it . . . shall we go to my friend's now, and get it over?" "He doesn't mind?" "Not a bit." "He must be a very accommodating friend." "He is," said Edward. "Where did you leave the luggage?" she asked, suddenly. They were walking along the Embankment. "At Charing Cross." "Well, I'm going to get it. And I shall go to the Charing Cross Hotel with it, and you can meet me in three hours." "But that'll only just give us time," he said. "Why not come with me now?" "Because," she said, firmly, "I won't play at mock marriages unless I like, and I won't play at all unless you let me do as I like first." "Won't you tell me why?" "I'll tell you when I meet you again." "Where?" he asked. And she stopped at the statue of Forster in the Embankment Gardens, and answered: "Here." Then she smiled at him so kindly that he asked no more questions, but just said: "In three hours, then," and they walked on together to Charing Cross. And after three hours, in which he had time to be at least six different Edwards, he met, by the statue of the estimable Mr. Forster, a lady all in fine white linen, wearing a white hat with a wreath of white roses around it, and long white gloves, and little white shoes. And she had a white lace scarf and a live white rose at her waist. "I thought I'd better dress the part," she said, a little nervously, "for the sake of the clerks, you know."