“Won’t it interfere with the shooting?”
“I had forgotten that—I don’t think I shall mind—the end of July, then.”
He took her hands and kissed them, and he thought as he got out into the street that he had felt them tremble. It was a pleasant surprise, on which he felt inclined to congratulate himself.
The knowledge had a quite other effect on his betrothed. She smote her clenched fists angrily together and scorned herself for the feebleness of her extremities.
“Mean deceitful wretch,” she cried, “to mislead that man, when I am only tired and wanting my tea!”
CHAPTER XXI.
There were some slight eruptions in the domestic circle at Waring Park before it was decided what form the wedding was to take. As might be expected, Mr. and Mrs. Waring in no way interfered, but kept themselves carefully aloof from the whole concern. But not so Dacre.
On hearing of the engagement, he swooped down on the paternal abode, all agog to have his say in the arrangements. He was now a budding warrior, full of himself and his profession, and horribly cocksure on all subjects in heaven and on earth, a good honest affectionate creature of conventions, but with “a coarse thumb” which he wielded in a promiscuous style, and often planted sheer on the quick.
Dacre wanted a wedding that would have astonished the neighbours, and that would more than probably have been the death of the two rarified beings who had borne him, but Gwen, backed by Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes, arranged things quite her own way.
The wedding was to be as quiet as a wedding can be. Neither Strange nor Gwen were rich in relations, which simplified matters. Lady Mary must come, of course, and the old Waring uncle, and one or two creatures of an unobservant and fossilized type, not worth mentioning, besides a few of Strange’s belongings.