"Hello!" he cried, accosting that gentleman. "You're enjoying to the full your last hours of bachelor bliss, I see."
"Speak for yourself," replied Scarsdale, who looked extremely bored. "You're also on the dizzy brink."
"It's a fact," admitted the Consul; "we are both to be married to-morrow. But that is all the more reason why we should make the most of our remaining freedom. You look as glum as if you'd lost your last friend. Come, cheer up, and have something to drink."
"They say," remarked the Englishman as he acquiesced in the Consul's suggestion, "that a man only needs to be married to find out of how little importance he really is; but I've been anticipating my fate. Miss Vernon's rooms are a wilderness of the vanities of life, and here I am, banished to the club as a stern reality."
"Quite so," replied the American. "I'm in the same box. The dressmakers have driven me clean out of Belgrave Square. But you, you really have my sympathy, for you are to marry one of my countrywomen, and they are apt to prove rather exacting mistresses at times like these."
"Oh, I'm fairly well treated," said Scarsdale; "much better than I deserve, I dare say. How is it with you?"
"Oh," laughed Allingford, "I feel as if I were playing a game of blind man's buff with English conventionalities: at least I seem to run foul of them most of the time. I used to imagine that getting married was a comparatively simple matter; but what with a highly complicated ceremony and an irresponsible best man, my cup of misery is well-nigh overflowing."
"I suppose you have been doing your required fifteen days of residence in the parish? London is slow work, now every one is out of town," remarked Scarsdale.
"My second-best hand-bag has been residing for the past fortnight in an adjacent attic, in fulfilment of the law," returned the American; "but affairs at the consulate have kept me on post more than I could have wished."
"I should not think you would have much business at this season of the year."