least on her part. No man situated as he was could have avoided the
speculation that now absorbed him in regard to the possible rivalry of
another. In the end he decided that Cardington's gaze, when it
lingered upon his hostess, betrayed reminiscence rather than hope.

It chanced that the dinner was followed by a wedding, one of those
forlorn ceremonies sometimes performed in the houses of the clergy
between those who seem to have no kin or friends or home of their own.
The bishop summoned his guests as witnesses, and as Leigh took the seat
which Miss Wycliffe made for him beside her, he was struck by the
impression which this not unusual incident appeared to make upon her
mind. She sat with her chin resting upon the palm of her hand, in
absorbed, almost pained, contemplation, as if the actual scene were
merely the starting-point of a long journey of the imagination.

In fact, there was nothing intrinsically interesting in the couple
before them. They possessed not even the picturesqueness of speech and
costume which belongs to the plebeian orders of older civilizations.
These were the people that seemed to justify Schopenhauer's cynical
contention concerning the economy of Nature, who invests youth with
just enough transient beauty to ensure the perpetuation of the race,
making men and women serve her purpose under the delusion that they are
free agents and ministers to their own pleasure. Here were no pomp and
circumstance to interpose their false colours before the sordid vista
of the future. It lay glaringly before the imagination of the
onlookers; and to avoid depths of spiritual depression, they had need
to remind themselves of the happy blindness of those that moved their
pity.

Leigh might perhaps have indulged in far other thoughts had the wedding