Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/365

Rh before I again raised my face. Mercifully the others were diverted by the journal. It was seized from me, passed from hand to hand, the incredible words read aloud by each iii turn. They jested of it!

"Amazing chaps, your pressmen!" Thus the tenth Earl of Brinstead, while I pinched myself viciously to bring back my lost aplomb. "Speedy beggars, what, what! Never knew it myself till last night. She would and she wouldn't."

"I think you knew," said the lady. Stricken as I was I noted that she eyed him rather strangely, quite as if she felt some decent respect for him.

"Marriage is serious," boomed the Mixer.

"Don't blame her, don't blame her—swear I don't!" returned his lordship. "Few days to think it over—quite right, quite right. Got to know their own minds, my word!"

While their attention was thus mercifully diverted from me my own world by painful degrees resumed its stability. I mean to say, I am not the fainting sort, but if I were, then I should have keeled over at my first sight of that journal. But now I merely recovered my glass of champagne and drained it. Rather pigged it a bit, I fancy. Badly needing a stimulant I was, to be sure.

They now discussed details: the ceremony—that sort of thing.

"Before a registrar, quickest way," said his lordship.

"Nonsense! Church, of course!" rumbled the Mixer very arbitrarily.

"Quite so, then," assented his lordship "Get me the rector of the parish—a vicar, a curate, something of that sort."