The ceremony was performed at a church at Herne Hill.  By an odd arrangement—­like everything else in the story of this pair, a result of social and personal embarrassments—­Monica’s belongings, including her apparel for the day, were previously dispatched to the bridegroom’s house, whither, in company with Virginia, the bride went early in the morning.  It was one of the quietest of weddings, but all ordinary formalities were complied with, Widdowson having no independent views on the subject.  Present were Virginia (to give away the bride), Miss Vesper (who looked decidedly odd in a pretty dress given her by Monica), Rhoda Nunn (who appeared to advantage in a costume of quite unexpected appropriateness), Mrs. Widdowson (an imposing figure, evidently feeling that she had got into strange society), and, as friend of the bridegroom, one Mr. Newdick, a musty and nervous City clerk.  Depression was manifest on every countenance, not excepting Widdowson’s; the man had such a stern, gloomy look, and held himself with so much awkwardness, that he might have been imagined to stand here on compulsion.  For an hour before going to the church, Monica cried and seemed unutterably doleful; she had not slept for two nights; her face was ghastly.  Virginia’s gladness gave way just before the company assembled, and she too shed many tears.

There was a breakfast, more dismal fooling than even this species of fooling is wont to be.  Mr. Newdick, trembling and bloodless, proposed Monica’s health; Widdowson, stern and dark as ever, gloomily responded; and then, that was happily over.  By one o’clock the gathering began to disperse.  Monica drew Rhoda Nunn aside.

‘It was very kind of you to come,’ she whispered, with half a sob.  ’It all seems very silly, and I’m sure you have wished yourself away a hundred times.  I am really, seriously, grateful to you.’

Rhoda put a hand on each side of the girl’s face, and kissed her, but without saying a word; and thereupon left the house.  Mildred Vesper, after changing her dress in the room used by Monica, as she had done on arriving, went off by train to her duties in Great Portland Street.  Virginia alone remained to see the married couple start for their honeymoon.  They were going into Cornwall, and on the return journey would manage to see Miss Madden at her Somerset retreat.  For the present, Virginia was to live on at Mrs. Conisbee’s, but not in the old way; henceforth she would have proper attendance, and modify her vegetarian diet—­at the express bidding of the doctor, as she explained to her landlady.

Though that very evening Everard Barfoot made a call upon his friends in Chelsea, the first since Rhoda’s return from Cheddar, he heard nothing of the event that marked the day.  But Miss Nunn appeared to him unlike herself; she was absent, had little to say, and looked, what he had never yet known her, oppressed by low spirits.  For some reason or other Miss Barfoot left the room.