The announcement of her engagement caused a flutter of excitement in the family. Mrs. Blather and Janet could not understand a girl's art life, but they could understand a wedding. They settled it between themselves that Clytie and her _fiancé_ should come down to Durdleham to be there married in the orthodox fashion. They had already drawn up a list of guests and a scheme of wedding arrangements when a letter arrived from Clytie saying that she was to be married almost immediately, and that on no account could the ceremony take place at Durdleham. The sisters were disappointed. Mrs. Blather remonstrated, adding arguments and entreaties that brought tears of desperation to Clytie's eyes. She hated the thought of willingly giving pain to her father and sisters, but a family ceremony was more than she could bear. By trying to explain the inexplicable she made matters worse. If Mrs. Blather and Janet had failed to understand her simple needs of a free, untrammelled girlish life, how could they unravel the tangled complexities involving her repugnance to their proposals? At last she wrote that the day was definitely fixed, and that if her sisters would not come to town, no one but her friends the Farquharsons and Winifred would be present at the ceremony. To journey up to London for the purpose of standing in a bleak, empty church on a dismal March morning just to see Clytie married in a travelling dress was a prospect not pleasing enough to be entertained. The sisters resigned themselves with a sigh to circumstances and to a catalogue of Clytie's eccentricities from her earliest years. Mrs. Blather sent Clytie a pair of silver candlesticks, Janet sent her a tea-service, and old Mr. Davenant, who had been courteously addressed by Hammerdyke on the subject of the marriage, sent her a check for one hundred pounds. And that ended the matter. Winifred spent the night before the marriage with Clytie. “Do come, Winnie dear,” the latter had said. “I shall be so lonely and miserable.” So Winnie came like a spirit of peace, and the two girls cried a little in each other's arms, and it was the weaker who comforted the stronger. “I shall keep on the studio,” said Winifred,--“I am getting quite rich, you know,--and then you can come sometimes and take off your things and make believe to be back again. And I shall come and see you in your big house--if you will tell your big husband not to frighten me away.” “You will always be my own sweet Winnie,” said Clytie tenderly, “and you will always get the very best out of me even if I change utterly to everybody else.” “But how can you change, dear?” asked Winifred in her simple faith. For she had lost her first instinctive distrust of Hammerdyke in the glamour of Clytie's love for him. “How can you ever be different from what you are and what you have always been?”