"Just so," returned the banker. "Let us hope that he will always have the same happy foresight. Well, if the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain: If we cannot go to the church, the church must come to us. Our sweet little bride, after looking forward to this day as the happiest of her life, must not be disappointed. The marriage can take place in this drawing-room just as well as within the walls of St. Cyprian's, unless indeed Miss Leslie attaches a peculiar sanctity to a marriage contracted within the church. Let us send to St. Cyprian's, and ask Captain Willard and the Vicar to come here. "I suppose there is no alternative," my uncle said, "short of a definite postponement of the wedding. But I'll see Daphne. It's time we should have been starting, so she's sure to be dressed. I'll go and fetch her now." He hurried off, and in a few moments came back with Daphne on his arm, looking in her dainty wedding dress more beautiful than I had ever seen her. She greeted me with so radiant a smile that the spectators might have taken me for the bridegroom. So deep was my emotion at seeing once more, and on so dramatic an occasion, the face whose image for so many months had haunted my dreams, that oblivious of all my surroundings, I could do nothing but gaze at her with an earnest and wistful (some might have called it stupid) look until her laugh--how sweet and familiar it sounded!--recalled me to myself. "Why, Frank, have you been in Germany so long that you have forgotten your native language? Speak to him in German, papa, and ask him if he is glad to see me." I stammered out a few words of greeting. I do not remember what. The happiness of seeing her again was too great to allow of conventional conversation and I drew back while the development of the situation was being explained to her. She was, of course, terribly disappointed by the turn events were taking, but her courage was splendid. Although in her eyes a marriage in a drawing-room was a less sacred ceremony than one within consecrated walls, she seemed less cast down by the prospect than did her bridesmaids who were being deprived of the chance of displaying their toilettes to the fashionable congregation of St. Cyprian's, and thus, in the probable absence of reporters, they would have to forego the pleasure of reading in the society papers the description of their finery. "Well, Daphne, what do you say?" her father asked. "Let George be sent for," she replied. "I will do just as he wishes." In my anxiety to see and question George I was on the point of starting for the church myself, but my uncle detained me. "No, no," he said. "Why should you expose yourself unnecessarily to this storm? Hall can go," and I had no option but to submit, and my uncle's valet was despatched with orders to bring back both Captain Willard and a clergyman.