Lady Bellamy sat in the drawing-room, and waited for her carriage; at last she heard the wheels upon the gravel. Then she rose, and rapidly did something to the great lamp upon the paper-strewn table. As she shut the door she turned.
“That will do,” she said.
In the hall she met the servant coming to announce the carriage.
“Is your master still in the dining-room?” she asked.
“No, my lady.”
She laughed a little, and civilly bade the man good-night.
CHAPTER LV.
Outside the door of the registry-office, Angela and her father had to make their way through a crowd of small boys, who had by some means or other found out that a wedding was going on inside, and stood waiting there, animated by the intention of cheering the bride and the certain hope of sixpences. But when they saw Angela, her stately form robed in black, and her sweet face betraying the anguish of her mind, the sight shocked their sense of the fitness of things, and they slipped off without a word. Indeed, a butcher’s boy, with a turn for expressive language, remarked in indignation to another of his craft so soon as they had recovered their spirits.
“Call that a weddin’, Bill; why, it’s more like a—funeral with the plumes off; and as for the gal, though she’s a ‘clipper,’ her face was as pale as a ‘long ‘un’s.’”
Angela never quite knew how she got back to the Abbey House. She only remembered that she was by herself in the fly, her father preferring to travel on the box alone with the coachman. Nor could she ever quite remember how she got through the remainder of that day. She was quite mazed. But at length it passed, and the night came, and she was thankful for the night.