On the afternoon of the wedding the temptation was not to be overcome. For a long time she fought it and at last, putting on a large hat and a veil she descended from the Babylon Arms and made her way by tram car to the neighborhood of St. Bart's. Before the church there was a great crowd (a fact for which she was doubtless thankful) which pressed close against the awnings and peered at the carriages that were beginning already to arrive. There was, she felt, something at once comic and pitiful in the spectacle of men and women crowding and pushing into the gutters for a glimpse of the fashionable people who descended and swept across the red carpet into the church. Among the arrivals there were dowagers who strained through the doors of tiny cabriolets, cow-eyed young girls, elderly bachelors dressed with the stiffness of starch, whole armies of relatives and friends, moving forward with a concentrated air of indifference to the stares, jostled fairly by men with cameras who climbed about on the steps and even as high as the façade of the church in order to capture brief glimpses of such people as the Apostle to the Genteel, Mrs. Champion and her Virgins, the questionable Mrs. Sigourney (who was always news), and the dewlapped Mrs. Mallinson.
With the arrival of the bridegroom's mother the jam became terrifying. Women fought with one another to catch a glimpse of a fat little woman clad in purple satin with a bird's nest on which a few violets had been carelessly planted, perched high on her head. Ellen, taller than most of the crowd, was able to see without being seen. She caught a swift glimpse of Thérèse as she emerged from the door of the cabriolet, only to see her swallowed up at once in the press of the onlookers. She appeared calm and had the air of a woman well satisfied. After all, she had succeeded in uniting two great fortunes. The bride was all that she should have been. The future was assured.
Of Richard Callendar himself, Ellen caught only a swift glimpse—a flash, no more, of a dark handsome face paler than she had ever seen it. A moment later the bride arrived, but of
