A little whispered conversation with the shabby little old clergyman, a paper shown by Meredith, and a ghost-like beckoning by the clerk, with intent to marshal the wedding-party to their places, and all was ready. The words of the solemn marriage service, which it was so dreadful to those two to repeat, which they had spoken once with such joyful hearts, were said for the second time, and nothing but the signing of the register remained to be done.
As Mr. Baldwin with his wife followed the shabby little old clergyman into the vestry, he whispered to Margaret,
"It is all over now, dearest; nothing can ever trouble or part us more but death."
She pressed the arm on which she was leaning very close to her breast, but she answered him never a word.
"Sign your name here, if you please, madam," said the clerk, putting a dirty withered old finger on the blank space in the large book which held in such trite record so many first chapters of human histories.
Mr. Baldwin had already signed, and was looking at his wife with eager attention. He saw the spasm of agony which crossed her face as she wrote "Margaret Hungerford." James Dugdale saw it too.
When Meredith and Dugdale in their turn had signed the register, and Mr. Baldwin had astonished the clergyman, to a degree unprecedented in his mild and mouldy existence, by the magnificence of the sum with which he rewarded his services, all was done, and the wedding-party left the church. Mr. Baldwin and Margaret got into the coach, and were driven to a shop in Piccadilly. There the driver, who was rather surprised at the novelty of a bridal pair being "dropped" at a shop instead of being taken home in orthodox style to breakfast, was dismissed. Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin returned to the hotel, as they had left it, on foot.
"Let me see--what's the name of the church and the parson?" said Hayes Meredith to James Dugdale, as they stood in the street when the coach had taken Baldwin and Margaret away, and the church-door was shut upon them.
He had an old-fashioned red morocco-leather pocket-book, with a complicated clasp, composed of brass wire, open in his hand, and he carefully noted down James's reply, heading the memorandum with the initials,
F. M. B.
M. H.