She ran into his arms and put up her face to him. "I thought you were going to forget that," she said, as he held her for a moment with his arm round her waist.
"I could not dare," he said, "to handle all that gorgeous drapery of lace. You were dressed up then for an exhibition. You look now as my wife ought to look."
"It had to be done, Llwddythlw."
"I make no complaint, dearest. I only say that I like you better as you are, as a girl to kiss, and to embrace, and to talk to, and to make my own." Then she curtsied to him prettily, and kissed him again; and after that they walked out arm-in-arm down to the carriage.
There were many carriages drawn up within the quadrangle of which the Foreign Office forms a part, but the carriage which was to take the bride and the bridegroom away was allowed a door to itself,—at any rate till such time as they should have been taken away. An effort had been made to keep the public out of the quadrangle; but as the duties of the four Secretaries of State could not be suspended, and as the great gates are supposed to make a public thoroughfare, this could only be done to a certain extent. The crowd, no doubt, was thicker out in Downing Street, but there were very many standing within the square. Among these there was one, beautifully arrayed in frock coat and yellow gloves, almost as though he himself was prepared for his own wedding. When Lord Llwddythlw brought Lady Amaldina out from the building and handed her into the carriage, and when the husband and wife had seated themselves, the well-dressed individual raised his hat from his head, and greeted them. "Long life and happiness to the bride of Castle Hautboy!" said he at the top of his voice. Lady Amaldina could not but see the man, and, recognizing him, she bowed.
It was Crocker,—the irrepressible Crocker. He had been also in the church. The narrator and he had managed to find standing room in a back pew under one of the galleries. Now would he be able to say with perfect truth that he had been at the wedding, and had received a parting salute from the bride; whom he had known through so many years of her infancy. He probably did believe that he was entitled to count the future Duchess of Merioneth among his intimate friends.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CROCKER'S TALE.
A thing difficult to get is the thing mostly prized, not the thing that is valuable. Two or three additional Kimberley mines found somewhere among the otherwise uninteresting plains of South Africa would bring down the price of diamonds amazingly. It could hardly have been the beauty, or the wit, or the accomplishments of Clara Demijohn which caused Mr. Tribbledale to triumph so loudly and with so genuine an exultation, telling all Broad Street of his success, when he had succeeded in winning the bride who had once promised herself to Crocker. Were it not that she had all but slipped through his fingers he would never surely have thought her to be worthy of such a pæan. Had she come to his first whistle he might have been contented enough,—as are other ordinary young men with their ordinary young women. He would probably have risen to no enthusiasm of passion. But as things had gone he was as another Paris who had torn a Helen from her Menelaus,—only in this case an honest Paris, with a correct Helen, and from a Menelaus who had not as yet made good his claim. But the subject was worthy of another Iliad, to be followed by another Æneid. By his bow and his spear he had torn her from the arms of a usurping lover, and now made her all his own. Another man would have fainted and abandoned the contest, when rejected as he had been. But he had continued the fight, even when lying low on the dust of the arena. He had nailed his flag to the mast when all his rigging had been cut away;—and at last he had won the battle. Of course his Clara was doubly dear to him, having been made his own after such difficulties as these.