When I come to myself, I find them all around me, though most of them stand at a little distance from the sofa. The strange clergyman has vanished—no doubt horrified at such unorthodox behavior.
Marmaduke, with folded arms, is stationed rather apart from the others, biting his lips, and making a violent effort to conceal his fear and emotion.
"Are you better, darling?" asks Bebe, whose arm is under my head, while Dora, supplied with a smelling-bottle, leans over me at the other side—the very sweetest picture of misery.
"I am," I return, feebly; "I don't know what made me so foolish. I did not feel nervous; but I was unlike myself all the morning."
"Poor child!" says Harriet, and down come Dora's tiny fingers, wet with eau-de-cologne, upon my forehead.
"I shall be all right in a minute or two," I go on, smiling as I regain strength. "It was too bad of me to frighten you all so much. In the middle of it, I suddenly recollected I had forgotten to order you any breakfast, and the horror of the thought must have been too much for me. I grow nervous and fanciful in my old age. But I am all right again now."
The day wears on; my wedding guests have had their lunch, and are now in the drawing-room, bidding me farewell before starting for the train that is to bear them away from the newly-married couple. How strange, how difficult to comprehend, it all appears!
Dora kisses me with a good deal more than her usual warmth. For once, her pretty show of sympathy is quite sincere. I think at this moment, seeing me so sick, and languid, and devoid of all the old unrestrainable joyousness, she, for the first time, altogether forgives me my misdoings. George kisses me, too, heartily, and murmurs a few confused congratulatory words. Even to his thick brain it has become apparent how strangely apathetic and indifferent is the bride.
"The continent is the place for you, Phyllis," he says; "any one can see that with half an eye. Get Carrington to take you there without delay!"
I smile faintly but make no rejoinder.