Had his companion been any other than Josephine, perhaps he would have felt differently; but he could not forget that he had once been represented as her lover, and something in her manner to-night warned him that she would not have regretted it had that farce been a bona fide marriage service instead, and he was exceedingly annoyed over the affair.
He met his mother as he was going through a hall, and she detained him by gently laying her hand upon his arm.
“Has anything disturbed you?” she asked, looking up into his clouded face.
“No, mother; nothing but that farce which has just been enacted. I do not like such things; they seem too much like sacrilege,” he returned.
“Neither do I like them, Archie,” she said, gravely. “We have no right to make light of any subject so serious as marriage; but Minnie is a wild, thoughtless girl, intent only on the excitement of the moment, and did not stop to consider. I must say, though, that Miss Richards helped to carry it off splendidly, and appeared the blushing, modest bride to perfection. She is a fine-looking girl.”
She said this to sound him, regarding him searchingly all the time that she was speaking.
“Yes; she appears to attract considerable admiration,” he replied, indifferently, and then passed on.
He went out at the great hall-door upon the veranda, which Josephine had just a moment or two ago traversed, and followed almost in her footsteps, until he came to that little circle of shrubbery, when, instead of going within it, he went around it.
He could not shake off the unpleasant sensations that were upon him; everything in his nature had suddenly seemed to become out of tune, and he wished to get away from even the sounds of the gay revelers within the house, while his thoughts turned wistfully toward the new world and Star.
He was getting very impatient to go to her, and he had intended to be on his way thither before this, but circumstances had recently transpired by which he would be detained another month, and the time seemed very long to him.