"I do wish you had a bit more colour in your cheeks to-day, miss," Fosset said, with rather a vexed air. "Not that I'd recommend you any of their vinegar rouges, or ineffaceable blooms, or anything of that kind. But I don't think I ever saw you look so pale. One would think _you_ were going to be married, instead of Lady Geraldine. _She's_ as cool as a cucumber this morning, Sarah Thompson told me just now. You can't put _her_ out easily." The carriages were driving up to the great door by this time. It was about twenty minutes to eleven, and in ten minutes more the procession would be starting. Hale Church was within five minutes' drive of the Castle. Clarissa went fluttering down to the drawing-room, where she supposed people would assemble. There was no one there but Mr. Granger, who was stalking up and down the spacious room, dressed in the newest and stiffest of coats and waistcoats, and looking as if he were going to assist at a private hanging. Miss Lovel felt almost inclined to ran away at sight of him. The man seemed to pursue her somehow; and since that night when George Fairfax had offered her his mocking congratulations, Mr. Granger's attentions had been particularly repugnant to her. She could not draw back, however, without positive rudeness, and it was only a question of five minutes; so she went in and entered upon an interesting little conversation about the weather. It was still fine; there was no appearance of rain; a most auspicious day, really; and so on,--from Mr. Granger; to which novel remarks Clarissa assented meekly. "There are people who attach a good deal of significance to that kind of thing," he said presently. "For my own part, _if_ I were going to be married to the woman I loved, I should care little how black the sky above us might be. That sounds rather romantic for me, doesn't it? A man of fifty has no right to feel like that." This he said with a half-bitter laugh. Clarissa was spared the trouble of answering by the entrance of more bridesmaids--Lady Louisa Challoner and Miss Granger--with three of the military men, who wore hothouse flowers in their buttonholes, and were altogether arrayed like the lilies of the field, but who had rather the air of considering this marriage business a tiresome interruption to partridge-shooting. "I suppose we are going to start directly," cried Lady Louisa, who was a fluttering creature of three-and-thirty, always eager to flit from one scene to another. "If we don't, I really think we shall be late--and there is some dreadful law, isn't there, to prevent people being married after eleven o'clock?" "After twelve," Mr. Granger answered in his matter of fact way. "Lady Geraldine has ample margin for delay." "But why not after twelve?" asked Lady Louisa with a childish air; "why not in the afternoon or evening, if one liked? What can be the use of such a ridiculous law? One might as well live in Russia." She fluttered to one of the windows and looked out.