I watched Mr. Latham, usually so immovable, during the ceremony as he stepped back from the altar into the shadows, when he left Sylvia finally with Horace.  His shoulders lost their squareness, his head drooped; but when I saw that it was to hide the tears that filled his eyes, I looked away.  Father says he has seen this type of man, contracted by money-getting, hardened by selfish misunderstanding, recover himself, soften, and grow young again at the transforming touch of grandchildren.  Who knows, Sylvia may find her childhood’s father again some day.

When we went back to the cottage for luncheon, the bump in Mrs. Jenks-Smith’s corsage was removed, and proved to be a gift for Sylvia,—­a thick leather case, holding a rich neck ornament of diamonds, a sort of collar with pendants, for the Lady of the Bluffs is nothing if not generous.

“I got it in this way without paying a cent of duty,” she said in a stage whisper to Miss Lavinia and me in the hall, as she struggled to release the box, wrenching off a waist hook or two as she did so.

“Jenks-Smith said it didn’t look natural, and I’d surely be spotted, but I said I’d like to see mere hired men try to tell a lady how stout or how thin she had a right to be.  Almost too gorgeous for a professor’s wife?  Not a bit; Miss Lavinia, you’re not advanced.  Nobody knows nowadays, at the launching, how anybody’s going to turn out,—­whether they’ll sink or float,—­and diamonds are an all-right cargo, anyway.  If she moves up, she can wear ’em, if she slumps, she can sell ’em, and if she just drifts along on the level, she can look at ’em once in a time.  No, my dear, diamonds are a consolation that no woman can afford to miss.”

Considering her usual careless good nature, it seemed to me that Mrs. Jenks-Smith was very fussy during the luncheon, ill at ease, and strangely anxious to hurry the departure of Sylvia and Horace.  The guests, all but ourselves, left first, then Mr. Latham, who went upstairs to take leave of his daughter alone.  When Sylvia finally came down, her colour had returned and she looked her radiant self again as she kissed Miss Lavinia and Mrs. Bradford, and went down the steps holding Horace, not by the arm, but clinging to his hand.

As the carriage disappeared around the bend of the road, and as we stood looking at one another, feeling for a second the reaction and the sense of an empty house that always follows the going of a bride, the Lady of the Bluffs sank into a deep chair exclaiming, “Thank the Lord, they’ve gone!”

“Why, what is it?  Are you ill?” cried father, who was just leaving, coming quickly to her side.

“It’s this.  I wanted to get her started north ahead of it.  When she comes back she won’t care so much,” she replied incoherently, pulling a scrap of a morning newspaper from her card-case and holding it out at random for the nearest one to take.  Father caught it from her hand, and going to the window, read aloud in slow, precisive accents of astonishment:—­