Mrs. Fellowes saw it, it was intensely pathetic to her and a revelation. She had at last, at the end of all these years, seen a glimpse of this small, golden-headed creature’s motherhood—after all she was really human! She hurried up, sat down beside her, and gently brought her back to herself. Then with one of Mrs. Waring’s hands caught in hers, as if she had been a child, she looked at Gwen, and wondered how on earth any girl with a stone for a heart could look as divine as she did. She looked round the church, and every man, woman, and child was worshipping her in audible silence. There was not a whisper, not a joke, not a smile.
As soon as the cake was cut, Gwen went away to dress. As she passed Mrs. Fellowes she whispered,
“Will you help me? I want to speak to you.—Mary, Mrs. Fellowes will help me to dress, and please don’t cry,” she said wearily, “I shall see you often, and—really, I have given you no very special reason to cry for me.”
She half laughed, then she stooped and kissed the old woman’s cheek.
“You have always been so good to me, come and see me before I go.”
When Mary had disappeared, choking, Gwen turned to the glass and began to take off her bracelets.
“Sit down and let me take off your wreath,” said Mrs. Fellowes.
“I wish I had done as Mr. Fellowes suggested,” said Gwen at last, playing with a diamond dagger that Strange had given her, “and looked through that marriage service; it is a degrading thing to lie as I have done to-day. I might have been any common-minded vulgar woman perjuring myself for a settlement. You see, I am marrying as a sort of experiment!—Oh, don’t, you gave my hair an awful pull!—Humphrey knows it, but I didn’t realize that I should actually have to swear to a lie—no experiment is worth that. I have put myself in a false position,” she continued, stirring irritably, “from having told those miserable blatant lies. I was never at a wedding in my life in the church, I always managed to escape that part, and I really never thought of the words, ‘love, honour, and obey,’ in any solemn, binding, personal connection. On the whole, it is a pity for women not to have been reared on Bibles and Prayer-books, it might keep them from some pitfalls, and no doubt the ordinary mother is useful too, in such cases.”
Mrs. Fellowes’ heart quivered painfully, and her hands trembled as she twisted up a coil of Gwen’s hair that had come loose. She had suspected the truth very early in the day, but all through her short engagement Gwen had kept both her and the Rector at arm’s length.
“When I found out what I really was in for,” went on Gwen, “it was too late to draw back—no, it wasn’t!” she cried, “the habit of lies is growing on me, but then I was ashamed, too much of a coward.”