She was gone. They were all gone, in a perfumed cloud of mauve, and with a bound he cleared the three entrance steps and ran to the crowd of vehicles that began to move about.
"Is Mrs. Williamson's carriage here?" he called loudly, and, as a one-horse coupe drew up to him, the odour of sweet peas was wafted across his nostrils and she swept in beside him, jealously guarding her skirts from harmful contacts. Obedient to her imperative 98 gesture, he took his seat beside her, and feeling unable to combine into any intelligible sentence his emotions and apprehensions, gazed questioningly into her flushed and sparkling countenance. She pressed the sweet peas to her breast, and as the carriage moved off at a rapid pace she looked deep into his eyes and spoke.
"Wasn't she lovely?" she said dreamily.
Antony opened his mouth and closed it, opened it again and again closed it. For a moment it seemed to him that his mind was reeling from its foundations; that perhaps, after all, he was the legitimate usher of Emily's wedding and that this lustrous-eyed creature with him was Gertrude . . . and then a wholesome rage came to his assistance.
"For heaven's sake," he cried, "talk reasonably! Where are we going? What town is this? Do you realise the awful situation we are in? I shall go raving mad if this thing keeps up much longer!"
She laid a small gloved hand on his knee and spoke calmly to the quivering youth.
"Listen," she said, "I do not see that we can do better than 99 go on to the house. It is a very big wedding and we can mix very easily in the crowd if only I can get another dress--or a long coat, somewhere. Perhaps I can. Especially now, when hardly any one is here yet. Then you can get hold of a carriage and we can drive to the station. We can at least get something to eat, for I know how hungry you are. Nobody knows who half the people are at a wedding--it is the safest place in the world for--for----"
"For escaping criminals," he concluded bitterly, yet with an unreasonable lightening of heart. "It is true, nobody will know me. And perhaps I can find out where we are."
"And who we are," she reminded him, smiling kindly.