She became now strangely quiescent; her energy, her individuality, her strength of will seemed, for the time, entirely to have gone. She surrendered herself to Grace and Paul and Katherine and they did what they would with her.
Only once was she disturbed. Two nights before the wedding she dreamt of Martin. It did not appear as a dream at all. It seemed to her that she had been asleep and that she suddenly woke. She was gazing, from her bed, into her own room, but at the farther end of it instead of the wall with the rosy trees and the gold mirror was another room. This room was strange and cheerless with bare boards, a large four-poster bed with faded blue hangings, two old black prints with eighteenth-century figures and a big standing mirror. In front of the bed, staring into the mirror, was Martin, He was dressed shabbily in a blue reefer coat. He looked older than when she had seen him last, was stouter and ill, with white puffy cheeks and dark shadows under his eyes. She saw him very clearly under the light of two candles that wavered a little in the draught.
He was staring into the mirror, absorbed apparently in what he saw there. She cried his name and he seemed to start and turn towards the door listening. Then the picture faded. She woke to find herself sitting up in bed crying his name ...
In the morning she drove this dream away from her, refusing to think of it or listen to it, but somewhere far down in her soul something trembled.
The wedding was over so quickly that she scarcely realised it. There was the stuffy little church, very empty and dusty, with brass plates on the wall. She could hear, in the street, rumblings of carts and the rattle of wheels; somewhere a barrel-organ played. The clergyman was a little man who smiled upon her kindly. When Paul put the ring on her finger she started as though for a moment she awoke from a dream. She was glad that he looked so clean and tidy. Grace was wearing too grand a hat with black feathers. In the vestry Paul kissed her, and then they walked down the aisle together. She saw Katherine and Millie and Henry. Her fingers caught tightly about Paul's stout arm, but she would have been more at home she thought with Uncle Mathew just then.
It was a nice bright spring day, although the wind blew the dust about. They had a meal in Katherine's house and some one made a speech, and Maggie drank some champagne. She hoped she looked nice in her grey silk dress, and then caught sight of herself in a glass and thought she was as ever a fright.
"My little wild thing—mine now," whispered Paul. She thought that rather silly; she was not a wild thing, but simply Maggie Cardinal. Oh, no! Maggie Trenchard ... She did not feel Maggie Trenchard at all and she did not suppose that she ever would.
They were to have a fortnight alone at Skeaton before Grace came. Maggie was glad of that. Paul was really nicer when Grace was not there.
They were all very kind to her. They had given her good presents—Millie some silver brushes, Henry some books, Philip a fan, and Katherine a most beautiful dressing-bag. Maggie had never had such things before. But she could have wished for something from her own people. She had written to Uncle Mathew but had not heard from him.
At the very last moment, on the morning of the wedding day, a present came from the aunts—an old box for handkerchiefs. The cover was inlaid with sea-shells and there was a little looking-glass inside.