Francesca, under an assumption of languid interest, was watching
Lady Caroline narrowly for some hint of suppressed knowledge of
Youghal's courtship of Miss de Frey.

"Whom are you marrying and giving in marriage?"

The question came from George St. Michael, who had strayed over
from a neighbouring table, attracted by the fragments of small-talk
that had reached his ears.

St. Michael was one of those dapper bird-like illusorily-active
men, who seem to have been in a certain stage of middle-age for as
long as human memory can recall them. A close-cut peaked beard
lent a certain dignity to his appearance--a loan which the rest of
his features and mannerisms were continually and successfully
repudiating. His profession, if he had one, was submerged in his
hobby, which consisted of being an advance-agent for small
happenings or possible happenings that were or seemed imminent in
the social world around him; he found a perpetual and unflagging
satisfaction in acquiring and retailing any stray items of gossip
or information, particularly of a matrimonial nature, that chanced
to come his way. Given the bare outline of an officially announced
engagement he would immediately fill it in with all manner of
details, true or, at any rate, probable, drawn from his own
imagination or from some equally exclusive source. The Morning
Post might content itself with the mere statement of the
arrangement which would shortly take place, but it was St.
Michael's breathless little voice that proclaimed how the
contracting parties had originally met over a salmon-fishing
incident, why the Guards' Chapel would not be used, why her Aunt