And the hero of this feast of happiness sat at her right hand, facing his little bride-elect, a miserable man consumed with anguish and remorse.  He had never had so painful a sense of the pathos of his Beaver.  For if anybody was happy it was she.  Flossie was aware that it was her hour, and that high honour was being paid to her.  Moreover, he could see for the moment that the worm had ceased to gnaw, and that she had become the almost affectionate thrall of the lady whose motto was Invictus.  She had been forced (poor little girl) to anticipate her trousseau in order to attire herself fitly for the occasion, and was looking remarkably pretty in her way.  She sat very upright, and all her demeanour was irreproachably modest, quiet and demure.  Nothing could have been more correct than her smile, frequent, but so diminutive that it just lifted her upper lip and no more.  No insight, no foreboding troubled her.  Her face, soft and golden white in the candlelight, expressed a shy and delicate content.  For Flossie was a little materialist through and through.  Her smooth and over feminine body seemed to have grown smoother and more feminine still under the touch of pleasure; all that was hard and immobile in her melting in the sense of well-being.

It was not merely that Flossie was on her good behaviour.  His imagination (in league with his conscience) suggested that the poor child, divinely protected by the righteousness of her cause, was inspired to confound his judgement of her, to give no vantage ground to his disloyalty, to throw him defenceless on his own remorse.  Or was it Lucia who inspired her?  Lucia, whose loving spirit could create the thing it loved, whose sweetness was of so fine and piercing a quality that what it touched it penetrated.  He could not tell, but he thanked Heaven that at least for this hour which was hers the little thing was happy.  He, for his part, by unprecedented acts of subterfuge and hypocrisy, endeavoured to conceal his agony.

Miss Roots alone divined it.  Beyond looking festive in a black silk gown and a kind of white satin waistcoat, that clever lady took a strained and awkward part in the rejoicing.  He was inclined to think that the waistcoat committed her to severity, until he became aware that she was watching him with a furtive sympathy in the clever eyes that saw through his pitiful play.  How was it that Lucia, she who once understood him, could not divine him too?

From this estranging mood he was roused by the innocent laughter of the Beaver.  He was aware of certain thin and melancholy sounds that floated up from some room below.  They struggled with the noises of the street, overcame, and rose strident and triumphant to invade the feast.  They seemed to him in perfect keeping with the misery and insanity of the hour.

It was Mr. Partridge playing on his flute.

Miss Roots looked at Lucia.  “That’s you, Lucy.  You’ve been talking to him about that flute.  I suppose you told him you would love to hear him play it?”