a precedent, and being asked to act the part of father on future
contingencies. There was only one bride, as he told Louis, whom he
could ever wish to give away. However, that trouble was spared him
by Mr. Mansell; but still Louis would not let him off, on the plea
that James's side of the house should make as imposing a
demonstration as possible.

Mrs. Frost was less manageable. Though warmly invited by the
Conways, and fondly entreated by her grandson, she shook her head,
and said she was past those things, and that the old mother always
stayed at home to cook the wedding dinner. She should hear all when
Clara came home the next day, and should be ready for the happy pair
when they would return for Christmas, after a brief stay at Thornton
Conway, which Isabel wished James to see, that he might share in all
her old associations.

All the rest of the party journeyed to London on a November day; and,
in gaslight and gloom, they deposited Mary at her aunt's house in
Bryanston Square.

Gaslight was the staple of Hymen's torch the next morning. London
was under one of the fogs, of which it is popularly said you may cut
them with a knife. The church was in dim twilight; the bride and
bridegroom loomed through the haze, and the indistinctness made
Clara's fine tall figure appear quite majestic above the heads of the
other bridesmaids.

The breakfast was by lamp-light, and the mist looked lurid and grim
over the white cake, and no one talked of anything but the
comparative density of fogs; and Mr. Mansell's asthma had come on,