Ina consoled him. “Do not be sad, dear friend. You are doing your duty; and as you do it partly to please me, I ought to try and reward you; ought I not?” And she gave him a strange look.
“I advise you not to press that question,” said he.
At the very hour of parting, Ina's eyes were moist with tenderness, but there was a smile on her face very expressive; yet he could not make out what it meant. She did not cry. He thought that hard. It was his opinion that women could always cry. She might have done the usual thing just to gratify him.
He reached home in good time: and played the grand seigneur—nobody could do it better when driven to it—to do honor to his sister. She was a peerless bride: she stood superior with ebon locks and coal black eyes, encircled by six bridemaids—all picked blondes. The bevy, with that glorious figure in the middle, seemed one glorious and rare flower.
After the wedding, the breakfast; and then the traveling carriage; the four liveried postilions bedecked with favors.
But the bride wept on Vizard's neck; and a light seemed to leave the house when she was gone. The carriages kept driving away one after another till four o'clock: and then Vizard sat disconsolate in his study, and felt very lonely.
Yet a thing no bigger than a leaf sufficed to drive away this somber mood, a piece of amber-colored paper scribbled on with a pencil: a telegram from Ashmead: “Good news: lost sheep turned up. Is now with her mother at Claridge's Hotel.”
Then Vizard was in raptures. Now he understood Ina's composure, and the half sly look she had given him, and her dry eyes at parting, and other things. He tore up to London directly, with a telegram flying ahead: burst in upon her, and had her in his arms in a moment, before her mother: she fenced no longer, but owned he had gained her love, as he had deserved it in every way.
She consented to be married that week in London: only she asked for a Continental tour before entering Vizard Court as his wife; but she did not stipulate even for that—she only asked it submissively, as one whose duty it now was to obey, not dictate.
They were married in St. George's Church very quietly, by special license. Then they saw her mother off, and crossed to Calais. They spent two happy months together on the Continent, and returned to London.