The wedding party drove to the hotel for lunch, an arrangement which, while it pleased Jim exceedingly and met with the delighted approval of the children, occurred to Rose as altogether irregular. It was not the bridegroom's duty to provide the wedding-breakfast, she had protested. But her husband talked her objections down and overruled them. "Hallam can afford to do it," he insisted. "Why shouldn't he? We can't give them a champagne breakfast anyhow." Besides the Bainbridges there was only one other guest, in the person of the best man, who was called Watkin, and whose acquaintance with the bridegroom seemed of the slightest. The absence of any relation or intimate friend of Hallam was a further aggravation to Rose. She looked at everything through dark-coloured glasses that day: no one else did: even John, whose respect for Hallam had decreased with the latter's deliberate committal of matrimony, allowed that there was considerable enjoyment to be got out of other people's weddings; the lunch at the "Grand" in particular appealed to him. Hallam bore himself well through the ordeal. Whatever his feelings were in regard to his wife's relations he managed on the whole to conceal them fairly well. Although he did not like Jim Bainbridge, and did not understand Rose in the remotest degree--he thought her disagreeable and commonplace and as unlike her sister as it was possible for a person intimately related to another to be--it pleased him to entertain them, and to note that they did full justice to his hospitality. Jim drank champagne, to which he was unaccustomed, and became surprisingly talkative and rather noisy; and Rose, responding to the same genial influence, relaxed, and forgot for a time her apprehensions. They made quite a merry party at their flower-decked table by the window, which opened on to the stoep and looked out upon the well-kept garden beyond. It was so near the finish of that part of Esme's life that Hallam was content to see her happily surrounded with her people, and to do his share in making himself agreeable; but he longed to be through with it and started on the journey to Cape Town, where he proposed staying for a week before embarking for England. When the talk was at its noisiest he felt Esme's hand reaching out under the table and touching his knee; his own hand went down and closed over it warmly while their eyes met in an understanding smile. She felt grateful to him for the effort she knew he was making for her sake to play his part well.