"Desire Mrs Abigail to come up this moment."
They heard the door shut violently, and Mrs Abigail came up, very demure and curtseying to the ground.
"Be seated, good woman. Your lady will excuse you. We wait the Reverend Mr MacDonald, with ring and licence, and you and Armitage shall serve for witnesses to the marriage. Now I think of it, call also the woman of the house."
He carried it masterfully, and Elizabeth, no more than any other woman, could be insensible to that charming tyranny. He stood behind her chair while the woman called for Mrs Mann--who came, mortally afraid of her company.
"Shall Mrs Abigail braid my hair?--it tumbles all about me," says Elizabeth, questioning her master timidly.
"'Tis so great a beauty I will not have it hid," he cries, standing behind her chair where the long locks lay on the ground.
Silence again, and the time passing.
At last, a sound as if Armitage propelled somewhat before him up the stair, and into the room walks his Grace's gentleman, and before him a stout personage in bands and cassock, so breathless from haste as to be incapable of any speech.
"Hath he the licence?"
"He hath, your Grace, but he declares that the occasion being so great, and the incumbent of Mayfair Chapel, Dr Keith, being at home and the chapel open, for the greater solemnity 'twere well to have the marriage solemnised there. 'Tis but ten minutes, and I have brought the chariot, if it please your Grace."