‘Ha! here’s somebody,’ he said, observing a man in the vestry.  He advanced with the intention of asking where Lord Mountclere was to be found.  Chickerel came forward in the same direction.

‘Are you the parish clerk?’ said Mountclere to the man, who was dressed up in his best clothes.

‘I hev the honour of that calling,’ the man replied.

Two large books were lying before him on the vestry table, one of them being open.  As the clerk spoke he looked slantingly on the page, as a person might do to discover if some writing were dry.  Mountclere and Chickerel gazed on the same page.  The book was the marriage-register.

‘Too late!’ said Chickerel.

There plainly enough stood the signatures of Lord Mountclere and Ethelberta.  The viscount’s was very black, and had not yet dried.  Her strokes were firm, and comparatively thick for a woman’s, though paled by juxtaposition with her husband’s muddled characters.  In the space for witnesses’ names appeared in trembling lines as fine as silk the autograph of Picotee, the second name being that of a stranger, probably the clerk.

‘Yes, yes—­we are too late, it seems,’ said Mountclere coolly.  ’Who could have thought they’d marry at eight!’

Chickerel stood like a man baked hard and dry.  Further than his first two words he could say nothing.

‘They must have set about it early, upon my soul,’ Mountclere continued.  ‘When did the wedding take place?’ he asked of the clerk sharply.

‘It was over about five minutes before you came in,’ replied that luminary pleasantly, as he played at an invisible game of pitch-and-toss with some half-sovereigns in his pocket.  ’I received orders to have the church ready at five minutes to eight this morning, though I knew nothing about such a thing till bedtime last night.  It was very private and plain, not that I should mind another such a one, sir;’ and he secretly pitched and tossed again.

Meanwhile Sol had found himself too restless to sit waiting in the carriage for more than a minute after the other two had left it.  He stepped out at the same instant that Christopher came past, and together they too went on to the church.

’Father, ought we not to go on at once to Ethelberta’s, instead of waiting?’ said Sol, on reaching the vestry, still in ignorance. ’’Twas no use in coming here.’

‘No use at all,’ said Chickerel, as if he had straw in his throat.  ’Look at this.  I would almost sooner have had it that in leaving this church I came from her grave—­well, no, perhaps not that, but I fear it is a bad thing.’

Sol then saw the names in the register, Christopher saw them, and the man closed the book.  Christopher could not well command himself, and he retired.

’I knew it.  I always said that pride would lead Berta to marry an unworthy man, and so it has!’ said Sol bitterly.  ’What shall we do now?  I’ll see her.’