“Don’t mention names, my dear; it is not well-bred. The one is young, and naturally fond of gayety; the other--well, is not quite so young, and stout, and all that.” “Oh, that is all very well,” said Alice; “but Aunt Mary says----” Miss Dale was coming in the evening, and the Miss Hills, and the curate, and the doctor, and various other people, who could not be asked to dinner, to whom it had been carefully explained (which, indeed, was a fact they knew) that to dine twelve people in the little dining-room of the cottage was a feat which was accomplished with difficulty, and that more was impossible. Society at Windyhill was very tolerant and understanding on this point, for all the dining-rooms were small, except, indeed, when you come to talk of such places as Huntingtower--and they were very glad to be permitted to have a peep at the bridegroom on these terms, or rather, if truth were told, of the bride, and how she was bearing herself so near the crisis of her fate. The bridegroom is seldom very interesting on such occasions. On the present occasion he was more interesting than usual, because he was the Honourable Philip, and because he had a reputation of which most people had heard something. There was a mixture of alarm and suspicion in respect to him which increased the excitement; and many remarks of varied kinds were made. “I think the fellow’s face quite bears out his character,” said the doctor to the Rector. “What a man to trust a nice girl to!” Mr. Hudson felt that as the bridegroom was living under his roof he was partially responsible, and discouraged this pessimistic view. “Mr. Compton has not, perhaps, had all the advantages one tries to secure for one’s own son,” he said, “but I have reason to believe that the things that have been said of him are much exaggerated.” “Oh, advantages!” said the doctor, thinking of Alick, of whom it was his strongly expressed opinion that the fellow should be turned out to rough it, and not coddled up and spoiled at home. But while these remarks were going on, Miss Hill had been expressing to the curate an entirely different view. “I think he has a _beautiful_ face,” she said with the emphasis some ladies use; “a little worn, perhaps, with being too much in the world, and I wish he had a better colour. To me he looks delicate: but what delightful features, Mr. Whitebands, and what an aristocratic air!” “He looks tremendously up to everything,” the curate said, with a faint tone of envy in his voice.