"She wishes the wedding to be very quiet, very quiet indeed; she wants only our own selves there, my father and hers and no one besides!"
"Why—why, bless me, bless my soul! You don't mean to say——" Sir Josiah's face was almost pitiful.
"She asked me last night, she begged me to side with her and uphold her wishes and I promised. I—I know, father, it's a disappointment to you, but we can't go against her, can we?"
"No, no, we can't go against her, that's right, right enough, no we can't go against her—never think of such a thing, I wouldn't, but I'd a thought that a young girl with all her friends would have liked——"
"It cannot be too quiet for her! And I promised to speak to you about it. Her father is very angry, unnecessarily angry, he spoke to her sharply, almost rudely in my presence last night, in a way——" Allan paused, "that my father would not have spoken to a woman!" he added proudly.
Sir Josiah gripped Allan's hand. "You—you're right, the little girl shall have her way, tell her; give her my love, Allan, and tell her what she says goes. As for his Lordship, his Lordship can—can go to the Dickens——"
Allan smiled. "I think his Lordship has been making for that quarter all his life!"
It was a bitter blow to the Baronet, but he took it like a man. He had counted on a gorgeous spectacle, for which he had been very willing to find the money. He had counted on portraits of the bride and bridegroom and bridegroom's father, to say nothing of the bride's father in the fashionable illustrated papers, as well as the daily illustrated press. He had cut out paragraphs from the Times and the Morning Post.
"A marriage has been arranged between Mr. Allan Homewood, only son of Sir Josiah Homewood, Bart., of Homewood, Sussex, and the Lady Kathleen Nora Stanwys, only daughter of the Earl of Gowerhurst."
He had cut out these news items and carried them about with him and shewn them to Jobson and Cuttlewell and Smith and Priestly (of Priestly, Nicholson and Coombe), and others of his City cronies. How proud he had been of them, how he had beamed and swelled with pride! He had hinted that he might ask—might possibly—ask Priestley and the rest to witness the ceremony. It had not been an actual promise, but next door to it, made by him in a moment of joyous enthusiasm following a good lunch and a bottle of excellent port.