Rose looked up, and as her eyes met the loving,
agitated glance of her nurse, she felt a sudden thrill
of warm gratitude to good old Anna, for Jervis had
whispered, "How lovely you look, darling! Somehow
I thought you would wear an everyday dress -- but
this is much, much nicer!"

Those present followed the order of the marriage
service with very varying emotions, and never had
the Dean delivered the familiar, awesome words with
more feeling and more grace of diction.

But the only two people in that room whose breasts
were stirred to really happy memories were Mr. and
Mrs. Robey. They, standing together a little in the
background, almost unconsciously clasped each other's
hands.

Across the mind of Sir John Blake there flashed a
vivid memory of his own wedding day. The marriage
had been celebrated in the cantonment church of an
up-country station, where, after a long, wearying engagement,
and a good deal of what he had even then
called "shilly-shallying," his betrothed had come out
from England to marry him. He remembered, in a
queer jumble of retrospective gratitude and impatience,
how certain of the wives of his brother officers
had decorated the little plain church; and the mingled
scents of the flowers now massed about him recalled
that of the orange blossoms and the tuberoses at his
own wedding.

But real as that long-vanished scene still was to
Jervis's father, what he now remembered best of all
the emotions which had filled his heart as he had stood
waiting at the chancel steps for his pretty, nervous

[[269]]

p268 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p269w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p270

v?