"And I married him without asking your consent, because I knew you never would have given it, and I am of age----"
"Yes, my dear, a bit long in the tooth!" broke in the old man viciously.
"Very," she replied; "but not so old a bride as you are a groom. I'm thirty-six, and, as you said yourself, if I choose to get married by special licence, provided there's no cause or just impediment, no one--not even the nearest and dearest--have a right to object. Isn't that what he said?" she added, in appeal.
The Reverend Patrick Bryce looked at his lordship and his lordship looked at him. Then suddenly came one of the rough, rude gaffaws.
"You've caught a tartar, parson!" chuckled the old man. "Take her, and be d----d to you both for a couple of fools. I'll leave you to be angry, if you like; this is my wedding-day and I want to be jolly. Here, Davie--Davie Sim, where the devil are you with your pipes? Skirl up 'Muir's Matching.' Now, my lady."
And as the wheeled-chair moved off accompanied by white satin and orange blossoms he looked round to the purple robe with almost boyish malice in his eye.
"Take the parson's arm and come along, Meg. You may as well get a good send off from the castle and have your share of the family wedding march, since it is little else you'll be getting from the Muirs of Drummuir."
That evening, after the newly made Lady Drummuir had been dismissed to her own rooms with the injunction to remember her new honours, and not to stand any cursed nonsense from any one, and the old man, regardless of gout, sat drinking one glass of port after another on the ground that, having got royally drunk at his three previous weddings, he was not going to treat his fourth with less consideration--Jack Jardine, somewhat breathless after all the disturbing and inexplicable events of the day, shook his head and said once more--
"Your father is a remarkable man--a very remarkable man!"
"Very," assented Peter. "Now I wonder what Marrion Paul had to do with it all!"