THE COLLECTED NOVELS OF E. M. DELAFIELD (6 Titles in One Edition). E. M. Delafield
her husband's arm, and her veil was thrown back, and both he and she exchanged radiant smiles and greetings with the thronging occupants of the seats on either side.
The hired electric brougham, the chauffeur unsightly with an immense white favour, was at the steps. The bride was handed in, yards of white satin carefully folded in after her, and followed by her husband, pursued by many humorous injunctions as to treading on it.
In the midst of " What a pretty wedding!" and " How sweet she looked!" Zella found herself in another electric brougham with three other bridesmaids, and then in a flash of time at the hotel selected by Muriel and her mother for the wedding reception.
It was very like any other afternoon party, Zella thought, except for the monotony of hearing and repeating, " What a pretty wedding!" and "How delightful to see them so happy!"
Amid a little modified screaming Muriel cut the cake, and shortly afterwards vanished upstairs with her mother, and everyone asked, "What time are they starting?" and " Where are they going?" with the same reiteration as everyone had said, "What a pretty wedding!"
"You looked charming, mignonne!" said Louis de Kervoyou to his daughter in her blue and white, standing rather forlornly amongst the crowd. She flashed into instant pleasure and animation.
"Thank you. I am so glad you like it."
"May I admire it too?" said James Lloyd-Evans, joining them.
"Do," smiled Zella. "Admire everything except the wedding. You must be tired of hearing how pretty it was."
"A stock formula saves one a certain amount of trouble," he returned, " and some people mean it kindly, I dare say."
Louis de Kervoyou laughed.
"My dear young cynics," he said with some kindly amusement, "why should they not mean it altogether? The wedding was pretty, as such things go, and it is only our extremely limited vocabulary that tinges all comment with the same banality."
"Was it pretty?" said James morosely. "Muriel was pretty, I grant you; but the wedding paraphernalia seems to me distressing, and—I can't find the word I want, and 'uncivilized' sounds affected and absurd in this connection, but it's more or less that."
Louis looked very kindly at the young man.
"The dream altogether merged in the business," he said. "But that is rather an effect of over-civilization."
"No," said Zella suddenly. "I know what you mean, James. The word is really 'barbaric'"
"Yes," said her cousin, it is."
They looked at one another for a moment.
Zella was so much elated at her own intuition that she immediately began to cast about in her own mind for a second expression of it that would excite James's appreciation still further. It may reasonably be doubted whether she would have attained her object, when Louis de Kervoyou said to James:
"Come down and discuss the matter at Villetswood one of these days."
Zella was pleased at the invitation and at James's ready acceptance, but she marvelled a little, for Louis did not often invite a guest to Villetswood.
"Is James what you expected him to be?" she asked when her cousin had moved away.
"He is rather a remarkable specimen of the modern youth," replied her father indirectly.
"He is very clever," said Zella profoundly.
"Yes; but a lot of them are that. James has the positively disconcerting peculiarity of being absolutely sincere.
Zella wondered rather uncomfortably why she disliked the idea. It seemed to furnish an explanation of the many times that a conversation with James had left her with no other sensation than that unsatisfactory one of being just exactly what her father had said—disconcerted.
"Why, it's Louis de Kervoyou!"
They both turned at the soft exclamation, and Louis cried joyously:
"Cecily! Why, I never was so pleased to see anyone!"
The joyous unconventionality of the greeting made one or two people near smile, and Zella coloured hotly, conscious for the first time that she understood what Aunt Marianne meant when she lamented the foreignness of poor Louis.
Presently he said:
"Let me present my daughter to you. Zella, I want to present you to Lady St. Craye, a very great friend of mine whom I have not met for years."
Lady St. Craye was a tall, slender woman, exquisitely dressed but with a sort of fluffy, whispy outline that looked as though only the strenuous efforts of a vigilant maid would save her from downright untidiness. Her china-blue eyes looked vaguely and kindly at Zella, and her smile, which had a sort of child-like pathos, was irritatingly unmeaning form its frequency.
"She is very like you, Louis. I am so glad to meet you; your mother was a great friend of mine," she murmured. "You must come and see me, and know my daughter. Louis, you remember Alison?"
"Quite well," he answered readily. "But last time I saw her she was a mite in a white frock, about six years old."
"Ten," she answered eagerly. "You won't know her again, Louis. Wait a moment."
She wandered a step or two forward, putting up a huge tortoiseshell pince-nez. Vague though her search was, as were all her movements, it was successful almost at once.
A tall girl, looking taller by reason of an enormous white aigrette that towered above every hat in the room, came slowly towards them.
"My dear mother!" Zella heard her say to Lady St. Craye, with that exceedingly distinct enunciation which generally carries farther than the most penetrating of screams, "are you really bent on waiting for the last scene of this appallingly commonplace drama? or, having assisted at the sacrifice, may we depart in peace?"
"I've just been talking to a very old friend of mine— Louis de Kervoyou; and I want you to come and speak to him, dear, if you will."
Miss St. Craye slightly shrugged her shoulders in a foreign manner, and raised her eyebrows, murmuring in sub-audible tones, "Encore!"
But she followed her mother, and bestowed a gracious smile and bend upon Louis, who looked up at her in amused consternation.
"You are indeed right, Cecily. I should not have known her. I am very glad to see you again, although, no doubt, you do not remember our first meeting?"
"I do not."
Zella wondered if Alison St. Craye always put so much emphasis into a simple negative or affirmative.
"This is my daughter. I hope you will see something of one another."
"Ah," said Miss St. Craye appraisingly. Her large eyes fixed themselves penetratingly upon Zella, her head slightly inclined to one side.
"You must come and speak French with me," she said. "I feel certain that you are more French than English."
Zella felt slightly gratified, divining instinctively that the words were meant as a compliment.
"I saw you in church," continued Miss St. Craye, "forming an integral part of the procession. What a curious idea all this is, is it not?"
She waved a comprehensive white kid glove around her.
Zella was not certain of her meaning, and made a diplomatic gesture of amused assent.
"Ah, you feel it too."
Alison St. Craye laid her hand for a moment on Zella's shoulder, regardless of the unconventionally of the attitude, and looked at her, nodding her plumed head once or twice.
"You must come and see me, little one," she said in her full, deliberate voice. The words, as she uttered them, seemed charged with an almost sacramental import, and Zella was unable to think of any adequate formula of acceptance.
Lady St. Craye's plaintive tones broke with an odd sound of conventionality upon the moment's weighty