“Handsome is as handsome does,” persisted the old gentleman, teasingly. “Cranstoun, I am a judge of character, and I shouldn’t be surprised if Carthew here had caught a Tartar in your child and my granddaughter.”
For the first time in his life, Sir Philip seemed to have lost his gift of bitter speech. The Duke of Lanark’s words filled him neither with indignation nor amusement, but with something approaching alarm. The Stella he had always known, with her sensitiveness, refinement, and proud self-control, seemed to have altered into something strange and fierce, wholly beyond his influence. This impression deepened when she presently entered the room, in her going-away costume of soft gray crape, and gray velvet cape trimmed with gray ostrich feathers, which last also adorned her large, shady hat. It had seemed unlucky to start a honeymoon in black, so for the time her mourning for her mother had been mitigated by this very becoming compromise.
The new Viscountess Carthew was buttoning one of her long gray Suède gloves as she came in. She stopped in her employment at the threshold of the dining-room, and gazed with a sort of bold, amused curiosity at the group who sat discussing an elegant lunch of old wines and cold viands at the other end of the room. Her bridegroom hurried to meet her, followed by the Duke of Lanark.
“Allow me, my dear,” the latter said, and deftly fastened the button, while almost at the same time he clasped round her wrist a magnificent bangle of rubies and diamonds.
“From your grandmother and myself,” he said, with a courtly bow.
She flushed with pleasure, and her wonderful eyes sparkled at sight of the jewels. She was almost as tall as he, and seemed to tower over her bridegroom, her father, and little Lady Northborough, who tripped up to her, full of compliments and admiration.
Under a thin gray net veil the bride looked more beautiful than ever, and Claud found himself wondering why he had never before noted the wonderful tints of her skin, where the whites and reds were indeed “cunningly laid on” by Nature’s lavish hand. She was strangely silent, though, and hardly spoke one word in reply to Lady Northborough’s fluent effusiveness. As to her father, she pointedly ignored him, and every one present noted with a shock of surprise that when, at the very last moment of leaving her home, as she stood on the terrace steps before entering the carriage, Sir Philip took her hand and would have kissed her cheek, she drew sharply back, and laughed in a way not pleasant to hear.
The next moment she had sprung lightly into the open carriage, and Lord Carthew, after taking an affectionate leave of his mother, got in beside her, the signal was given to the coachman, the gray horses started at a brisk pace, and without rice, or satin slippers, or any other harbingers of good luck in their rear, the bridal pair started on their journey.
Lord Carthew was very loath to begin his married life with fault-finding. But his bride’s conduct on the steps had startled and shocked him.
“I am sorry, dearest,” he said, gently, “that you did not part friends from Sir Philip.”