“The handsomest couple I ever saw!” Mrs. Price whispered to Dr. Gerry, dabbing the moisture from her eyes with the handkerchief that she had already wept into a ball.
Dr. Gerry moved an eye around to look at her without moving his head, much as the drowsy crocodile views curious observers at the aquarium; but he made no comment. He had spent the night in trying to force Faunce to tell Diane the truth before she married him. He had failed, and was therefore an unwilling witness at the ceremony.
The quaint old library, the room Diane had chosen, was scarcely altered from its every-day aspect. Above the low book-shelves that lined the walls were fine examples of pottery and bronze, which gleamed warmly in the light of the fire in the great fireplace. A few moss-roses and tall ferns, sent from a New York conservatory, were the only ornaments.
Dr. Price, small, precise, and placid, in his white surplice and black cassock, his white hair smoothed back with what Horace Walpole would have called “a soupçon of curls behind,” performed the ceremony before a group of old friends and neighbors, the only witnesses. Mrs. Price lifted her plump, wrinkled face and kissed the bride on both cheeks.
“My dear, I wish you every blessing! You remind me of Rachel, and Ruth, and all the brides of the Bible. And, dear Diane, he’s so handsome! It seems almost wicked for nature to waste so much beauty on a mere man, even if he is a hero!”
Diane glanced smilingly at Faunce.
“Isn’t it splendid for me, Cousin Julia? I don’t need to shine when he’s near, do I?”
The little woman plunged in deeper, and was still babbling along when her daughter, a little pale and nervous, came to tell Diane it was time to change her dress for the journey. Glad to escape, the two girls ran up-stairs together, and Fanny and the maid made haste to help transform a white-and-silver bride into a trim, tailor-made young woman ready for the train. While the transformation was in progress, Diane grew more composed, and helped with her deft fingers in the knotting and unknotting of ribbons and laces and flowers.
“It went off beautifully, Di!” Fanny felt that she could say this with safety, as she plunged into a new hat-box after the bride’s traveling-hat. “That cake from New York was fine. I left dear papa eating it, and he’ll be ill to-morrow.”
“I noticed the flowers, Fan,” Diane said, fastening fresh hooks, while she sent the maid on an errand. “I’m glad I didn’t have too many. Is that hat becoming? It seems to me too—too flamboyant. The styles are dreadful!”