He was several inches taller than Winn, slim, with a small athletic head and perfectly cut Greek features; his face would have been a shade too regular and too handsome if he had not had the very same hard-bitten look in his young gray eyes that Winn had in his bright, hawk-like brown ones. Lionel was looking at Estelle as she came up the aisle in a tender, protective, admiring way, as if she were a very beautiful flower. This was most satisfactory, but at least Winn might have done the same. Instead of looking as if he were waiting for his bride, he looked exactly as if he were holding a narrow pass against an enemy. His very figure had a peculiarly stern and rock-like expression. His broad shoulders were set, his rather heavy head erect, and when he did look at Estelle, it was an inconceivably sharp look as if he were trying to see through her.
She didn’t know, of course, that on his way to church he had thought every little white cloud in the blue sky was like her, and every lily in a cottage garden. There was a drop of sardonic blood in him, that made him challenge her even at the moment of achieved surrender.
“By Jove,” he thought to himself, “can she be as beautiful as she looks?”
Then the service began, and they had the celebration first, and afterward the usual ceremony, perfectly conducted, and including the rather over-exercised “Voice that Breathed o’er Eden.” The dean gave them an excellent, short and evasive address about their married duties, a great deal nicer than anything in the Prayer Book, and the March from Lohengrin took them to the vestry. In the vestry Winn began to be tiresome. The vicar said:
“Kiss the bride,” and Winn replied:
“No, thanks; not at present,” looking like a stone wall, and sticking his hands in his pockets. The vicar, who had known him from a boy, did not press the point; but of course the dean looked surprised. Any dean would.
The reception afterwards would have been perfect but for the Staines, who tramped through everything. Estelle perpetually saw them bursting into places where they weren’t wanted, and shouting remarks which sounded abusive but were meant to be cordial to cowering Fanshawes and Arnots. It was really not necessary for Sir Peter to say in the middle of the lawn that what Mr. Fanshawe wanted was more manure.
It seemed to Estelle that wherever she went she heard Sir Peter’s resonant voice talking about manure.
Lady Staines was much quieter; still she needn’t have remarked to Estelle’s mother, “Well — I’m glad to see you have seven children, that looks promising at any rate.” It made two unmarried ladies of uncertain age walk into a flower-bed.
Winn behaved abominably. He took the youngest Fanshawe child and disappeared with him into the stable yard.