Elsa held up the vacant finger with a philosophic grimace.
“But—”
“I’d rather not go into it now, if you don’t mind,” she half yawned. “It’s rather a boring business, and I’m trying to forget I was ever such a fool as to be taken in.”
“Oh, but Elsa—after starting off so splendidly—the dance....”
“Well, isn’t it better to wake up now than too late? Besides, it’s merely an episode. Love is only an episode, little one. Don’t you hang on so hard to your dangerous ideals!”
And she reached across and pinched Stella’s cheek in her vaguely rough way.
IV
The wedding was a very quiet and modest affair—a little quieter and more modest, to tell the truth, than quite appealed to Stella’s ambitious notions of grandeur, though it was a church wedding, too, with a small reception afterward.
Of course every one was tremendously impressed by the bridegroom, and everybody said how sweet the bride looked. Aunt Alice wept happy tears on people’s shoulders, and between whiles talked faster than any one else.
Meade gave his daughter away, and looked very proud, though also a little pathetic in his dress suit.