"Simmy Dodge says you are not living at your grandfather's house any longer," she broke, irrelevantly.
"I am at a hotel," he said, and no more.
"I see," she said, frowning very darkly for her.
He studied her face for a moment, and then arose from the chair beside her bed. "You may be interested to hear that while I am invited to attend the wedding to-morrow afternoon I shall not be there," he said, divining her thoughts.
"I didn't like to ask," she said. The nurse came into the room. "He says I'm doing as well as could be expected, Miss McKane," she said glibly, "and if nothing unforeseen happens I'll be dodging automobiles in Fifth Avenue inside of two weeks. Good-bye, Doctor."
"Good-bye. I'll look in to-morrow—afternoon," he said.
The marriage of Anne Tresslyn and Templeton Thorpe took place at the home of the bridegroom at four o'clock on the afternoon of the twenty-third. A departure from the original plans was made imperative at the eleventh hour by the fact that Mr. Thorpe had been quite ill during the night. His condition was in no sense alarming, but the doctors announced that a postponement of the wedding was unavoidable unless the ceremony could be held in the Thorpe home instead of at Mrs. Tresslyn's as originally planned. Moreover, the already heavily curtailed list of guests would have to be narrowed to even smaller proportions. The presence of so many as the score of selected guests might prove to be hazardous in view of the old gentleman's state of nerves, not to say health. Mr. Thorpe was able to be up and about with the aid of the imperturbable Wade, but he was exceedingly irascible and hard to manage. He was annoyed with Braden. When the strange illness came early in the night, he sent out for his grandson. He wanted him to be there if anything serious was to result from the stroke,—he persisted in calling it a stroke, scornfully describing his attack as a "rush of blood to the head from a heart that had been squeezed too severely by old Father Time." Braden was not to be found. What annoyed Mr. Thorpe most was the young man's unaccountable disposition to desert him in his hour of need. In his querulous tirade, he described his grandson over and over again as an ingrate, a traitor, a good-for-nothing without the slightest notion of what an obligation means.
He did not know, and was not to know for many days, that his grandson had purposely left town with the determination not to return until the ill-mated couple were well on their way to the Southland, where the ludicrous honeymoon was to be spent. And so it was that the old family doctor had to be called in to take charge of Mr. Thorpe in place of the youngster on whom he had spent so much money and of whom he expected such great and glorious things.
He would not listen to a word concerning a postponement. Miss Tresslyn was called up on the telephone by Wade at eight o'clock in the morning, and notified of the distressing situation. What was to be done? At first no one seemed to know what could be done, and there was a tremendous flurry that for the time being threatened to deprive Mr. Thorpe of a mother-in-law before the time set for her to actually become one. Doctors were summoned to revive the prostrated Mrs. Tresslyn. She went all to pieces, according to reports from the servants' hall. In an hour's time, however, she was herself once more, and then it was discovered that a postponement was the last thing in the world to be considered in a crisis of such magnitude. Hasty notes were despatched hither and thither; caterers and guests alike were shunted off with scant ceremony; chauffeurs were commandeered and motors confiscated; everybody was rushing about in systematic confusion, and no one paused to question the commands of the distracted lady who rose sublimely to the situation. So promptly and effectually was order substituted for chaos that when the clock in Mr. Thorpe's drawing-room struck the hour of four, exactly ten people were there and two of them were facing a minister of the gospel,—one in an arm chair with pillows surrounding him, the other standing tall and slim and as white as the driven snow beside him....