Then the bride and bridegroom took their places under the bell, and the service proceeded in the usual manner. One rehearsal was rudely interrupted by the fall of one of the wooden _amorini_ at this point, which narrowly missed the dummy-bridegroom's head, and fell with a loud crash, splintering itself into match-wood on, the floor of the chancel. So another one was procured, and they were all more securely wired. Immense baskets of white flowers were to be carried by the bridesmaids, which they were to strew in the path of the bride both as she entered and left the church with her husband; and from the belfry outside, as they emerged, a shower of sham satin slippers with little parachute wings, so that they should float in the air and sink very gradually on to the heads of the amazed crowd, was to be discharged. These had been tested privately, and were not used in the rehearsals. Bertie had arrived in New York some fortnight before the marriage, leaving Mr. Palmer, who was very much occupied, in England, to follow a week later. Wedding-presents for both of them had begun arriving, and were still doing so in shoals, and every day he was occupied for several hours in writing letters of gratitude. He soon got a certain facility at this, but one morning there arrived for him a present which astonished him. The present itself was a charming dressing-bag (there was nothing surprising in this, for it was the eleventh he had received), and the donor was Mrs. Emsworth. She wrote with it a characteristic little note, saying that she was unable to come to the ceremony, as she was at Chicago, and begging him to forget her and not acknowledge the gift. She was making a great success with her tour, and was getting quite rich. Considering what had happened, this seemed to him one of the most superb pieces of impertinence ever perpetrated. 'She was getting quite rich!' Quite so; she had made a considerable sum lately apart from her theatrical business; she could well afford to give him a dressing-bag. But the impertinence of it, the irresistible impertinence! How like the _gamin_ who puts his tongue in his cheek and says 'Yah!' He almost laughed when he thought of it. But the laughter died at the memory of those sickening hours in London on the day he had received the blackmailing letter, and in a sudden spasm of anger against her, not pausing to consider whether it was wise or not, he gave orders that the bag should be packed up again and sent back to her at Chicago, without word of any kind. She would understand quite well.