“Sefton,” said the girl, turning to her husband, and speaking in a tone that had more of a command than a request in it, “will you tell the coachman to drive first to All Saints churchyard—I want to lay these flowers on my mother’s grave.”
The guests assembled under the porch, with their rice and old satin shoes, exchanged glances. It was like the sound of a funeral-bell in the midst of a feast.
“My dear love!” cried Lady Culvers, rustling forward in her silks and velvets, “let someone else do that for you!” then, as Ida deigned no reply, and the coachman touched his horses with the whip, she turned to Juliet, who was standing at her elbow straining her eyes to see the last of her darling sister, and exclaimed, “Oh, what odd fancies she has! Where can she get them from?”
“From my father, of course,” answered Juliet, promptly; “his odd fancies are only too well known.” And the tone in which she spoke the words gave as their undercurrent of meaning: “If it had not been for my father’s odd fancies, you would be Miss Pigott at the present moment, our devoted and obedient chaperon, writing our letters for us, doing everything in fact that we didn’t feel inclined to do, and showering gratitude upon us in return for our odds and ends of silks and laces.”
These two sisters resembled each other in face and figure as only twin sisters could; Juliet, in fact, might have been called the replica of Ida, with license, however, given to the artist to repeat his original design with a lighter brush and in slightly brighter colour. And not alone in face and figure was their twinship proclaimed, in temperament and character the same striking resemblance was apparent. Each was bright, gay, imaginative, quick-tempered and quick-witted, and, as a rule, the wishes and opinions of one might have been taken without a question as the wishes and opinions of the other. What of seriousness, if any, might lie beneath their apparently reckless gaiety of mood and manner would have been a difficult question for even their most intimate friends to determine.
The cloud that had gathered on Juliet’s face as she had kissed her farewell to her sister disappeared with the sound of the carriage wheels that bore her away. She looked around at the guests. To her fancy they all more or less appeared bored or triste. Even her father’s placid face, with its benignant smile, had an unmistakeable look of weariness upon it—a look which said plainly as words could: “I wish to goodness all this fuss and botheration were over, and I could quietly slip away to an easy-chair and a cigar.”
It was too tempting! Something she must do, someone she must stir into animation, or she would become drowsy and stupid, like the rest.
So she crossed the room to her father’s side, a vision of poetic loveliness in her soft, white silk robes, with their maize trimmings and tea-roses, but with a smile on her lip, and mischief in her heart, that would have suited sprite Puck himself.
“Father,” she said, in the quiet, cooing voice she generally affected when one of her most tricksy moods was upon her, “about twenty names have just come into my head—of people who ought to have been asked today. And they all begin with an N! Is it possible that when Ida and I made out the list we turned over two leaves of the visiting-book together, and so went on from M to O? There’ll be no end of botherations when we get back to town.”
Lord Culvers’s benignant smile vanished. Nature had sent him into the world with a disposition as peaceful and placid as a still lake amid mountains, and Fate had linked his lot with temperaments as restless and turbulent as the ocean itself. Was life for him to be forever whirlpool and worry?
An exclamation of annoyance rose to his lips. A voice, however, over Juliet’s shoulder intercepted it.
“Juliet,” it said, “come into the garden a moment. I want specially to speak to you. I haven’t had an opportunity before.”
The speaker was a man of about eight-and-twenty, a tall, well-built young fellow, with crisp, curly hair of a reddish-brown, and very prominent, very bright, brown eyes. His face was of the type one sees in classic pictures or Roman sculpture, and that one associates with the helmet, spear, and shield of Mars, or of Hector, or Achilles. And lo! he came of a race that had been moneygrubbers for generations—the Redways of London, Liverpool, and New York, world-renowned as merchant-princes, and of late years as financiers and bankers.
This was Clive Redway, Juliet’s affianced lover, only son of Joshua Redway, the present representative of the firm, and the owner of large estates in two English counties, a deer-forest in Scotland, and one of the most palatial of modern houses to be found in London.
Juliet followed her lover into the garden.
Glynde Lodge, the house that had been lent to Lord Culvers for the wedding, was small and unpretending, and stood in a few acres of land abutting on the high-road between Ore and Hastings.
The trees it owned to were ill-grown and but few in number, consequently, although the rays of the June sun were already beginning to slant, the unshadowed lawn and gravelled walks did not look attractive as promenades.
“Oh, my complexion!” cried Juliet, holding her bouquet of tea-roses slantwise over her face, and leading the way across the lawn to a small arbour at its farther end.
“Never mind about your complexion just for once,” said the young man, almost irritably; “I want to know about this wedding. Last night, you know, I couldn’t get you alone for five minutes. I was never more astounded in my life than when I had your letter,
