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Like all weddings it had left the strange feeling of futility, the slight sense of depression that comes to English people who have tried, from their strong sense of tradition, to be festive and sentimental and in high spirits too early in the day. The frame of mind supposed to be appropriate to an afternoon wedding can only be genuinely experienced by an Englishman at two o'clock in the morning.

"Man alone, I almost instinctively knew, as well as by what I had industriously picked up at weddings and christenings, was possessed of the only remedy that could reduce this rebellious disorder; but watched and overlooked as I was, how to come at it was the point, and that, to all appearance, an invincible one; not that I did not rack my brains and invention how at once to elude my mothers vigilance, and procure myself the satisfaction of my impetuous curiosity and longings for this mighty and untasted pleasure.

After the Marquess's death he had lived for a while from hand to mouth, copying music, writing poetry for weddings and funerals, doing pen-and-ink portraits at a scudo apiece, and putting his hand to any honest job that came his way.

He sat down in the obvious lodging-house bedroom, lighted a cigarette and looked at Osborn without a smile. He prepared himself to be bored and amazed; weddings, tiresome as they were, always amazed him. And he was prepared, too, for a settled insanity in Osborn until "I wonder how long he'll be?" Rokeby thought.

But what could be expected if a man did not choose to attend to his own business? The wedding went by, as grand weddings do, without let or hindrance, according to the approved pattern. A Cabinet minister honoured it with his presence, and, being a distant relation of the Brabants, remained for a few days after the grand occasion.

From Saxon times there had existed in Beverley a guild of minstrels, a prosperous fraternity bound by regulations, which Poulson gives at length in his monumental work on Beverley. The minstrels played at aldermen's feasts, at weddings, on market-days, and on all occasions when there was excuse for music.

There was more discussion of bridegroom and bride than is usual at society weddings, which are apt to become mere reunions of fashionable people, only vaguely conscious of the identity of those in whose honour they have been gathered together.

"My young friends here have their nerves a little shaken," said the widow, with a smile, to the clergyman at the altar. "But so many weddings have been ushered in with the merriest peal of the bells, and yet turned out unhappily, that I shall hope for better fortune under such different auspices."

You'll like him, I know. I'll find him and bring him to you, and you can ask him to come while I'm putting on my things." She hunted him up and he was very pleased to meet Mr. Leverett. She gave them quite a while, for she was chatting with the girls about some weddings on the tapis. She gave Mr. Marsh her hand and a smile that would have set almost any masculine heart beating.

Come, sir, old love burns strong; there's many a one comes to see weddings that go away brides themselves!"