"What are you talking about, you two?"
"You've guessed it; about you," returned the young aunt.
For a hidden moment Pat's eyes met Scott's and shot forth their ardent message before the sweeping lashes curled down. "Leave me a few shreds," she called back gaily.
"Pat considers herself a miracle of astuteness and knowledge," pursued the aunt. "Having been taught the gospel of lies and trash, she is sure of her own natural inviolability. If anything in the world ought to be banned from the access of Pat and her kind, it is the Salamander-story of the Girl Who Always Comes Out Right. It isn't true; it never will be true; it never has been true. Women aren't that way."
She let her pensive, grey gaze wander to the doorway wherein Pat had vanished, then return to meet Scott's.
"I know," she said coolly. "I've tried."
CHAPTER XIX
Slow and stately, the measure of the Lohengrin Wedding March pulsated through the church; much slower and statelier than Herr Wagner ever intended that it should be delivered, unforeseeing that his minute directions would be universally disregarded off the stage in order that the bride might make her progress up the aisle less like a human being with a happy goal in sight than like a rusty mechanism directed by a hidden and uncertain hand. Even to that halting rhythm, however, Mary Delia Fentriss, owner of her own name and her own maiden self for the last time, managed to walk like a proud and graceful young goddess to the accompaniment of something more than the usual hum of admiration and excitement. T. Jameson James stood awaiting her, looking handsome, well-groomed, perfectly self-possessed, and even more self-satisfied.