This he said with a half-bitter laugh. Clarissa was spared the trouble of answering by the entrance of more bridesmaids—Lady Louisa Challoner and Miss Granger—with three of the military men, who wore hothouse flowers in their buttonholes, and were altogether arrayed like the lilies of the field, but who had rather the air of considering this marriage business a tiresome interruption to partridge-shooting.
"I suppose we are going to start directly," cried Lady Louisa, who was a fluttering creature of three-and-thirty, always eager to flit from one scene to another. "If we don't, I really think we shall be late—and there is some dreadful law, isn't there, to prevent people being married after eleven o'clock?"
"After twelve," Mr. Granger answered in his matter of fact way. "Lady
Geraldine has ample margin for delay."
"But why not after twelve?" asked Lady Louisa with a childish air; "why not in the afternoon or evening, if one liked? What can be the use of such a ridiculous law? One might as well live in Russia."
She fluttered to one of the windows and looked out.
"There are all the carriages. How well the men look! Laura must have spent a fortune in white ribbon and gloves for them—and the horses, dear things!"—a woman of Lady Louisa's stamp is generally enthusiastic about horses, it is such a safe thing—"they look as if they knew it was a wedding. O, good gracious!"
"What is the matter. Lady Louisa?"
"A man from the railway—with a telegram—yes, I am sure it's a telegram! Do you know, I have such a horror of telegrams! I always fancy they mean illness—or death—or something dreadful. Very absurd of me, isn't it? And I daresay this is only a message about some delayed parcel, or some one who was to be here and can't come, or something of that kind."
The room was full of idle people by this time. Every one went to the open window and stared down at the man who had brought the telegram. He had given his message, and was standing on the broad flight of steps before the Castle door, waiting for the return of the official who had taken it. Whether the electric wires had brought the tidings of some great calamity, or a milliner's apology for a delayed bonnet, was impossible to guess. The messenger stood there stolid and impenetrable, and there was nothing to be divined from his aspect.
But presently, while a vague anxiety possessed almost every one present, there came from the staircase without a sudden cry of woe—a woman's shriek, long and shrill, ominous as the wail of the banshee. There was a rush to the door, and the women crowded out in a distracted way. Lady Laura was fainting in her husband's arms, and George Fairfax was standing near her reading a telegram.