“I’ve done it!” she cried.

“Done what?”

“Told him.”  She nodded toward the door.  “He’s just gone.  Jane is out, and I had a chance to talk to him alone.”

Lethbury pushed a chair forward and she sank into it.

“What did you tell him?  That she is not always—­”

Mrs. Lethbury lifted a tragic eye.  “No; I told him that she always is—­”

“Always is—?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause.  Lethbury made a call on his hoarded philosophy.  He saw Jane suddenly reinstated in her evening seat by the library fire; but an answering chord in him thrilled at his wife’s heroism.

“Well—­what did he say?”

Mrs. Lethbury’s agitation deepened.  It was clear that the blow had fallen.

“He...he said...that we...had never understood Jane... or appreciated her...”  The final syllables were lost in her handkerchief, and she left him marvelling at the mechanism of a woman.

After that, Lethbury faced the future with an undaunted eye.  They had done their duty—­at least his wife had done hers—­and they were reaping the usual harvest of ingratitude with a zest seldom accorded to such reaping.  There was a marked change in Mr. Budd’s manner, and his increasing coldness sent a genial glow through Lethbury’s system.  It was easy to bear with Jane in the light of Mr. Budd’s disapproval.

There was a good deal to be borne in the last days, and the brunt of it fell on Mrs. Lethbury.  Jane marked her transition to the married state by an appropriate but incongruous display of nerves.  She became sentimental, hysterical and reluctant.  She quarrelled with her betrothed and threatened to return the ring.  Mrs. Lethbury had to intervene, and Lethbury felt the hovering sword of destiny.  But the blow was suspended.  Mr. Budd’s chivalry was proof against all his bride’s caprices, and his devotion throve on her cruelty.  Lethbury feared that he was too faithful, too enduring, and longed to urge him to vary his tactics.  Jane presently reappeared with the ring on her finger, and consented to try on the wedding-dress; but her uncertainties, her reactions, were prolonged till the final day.

When it dawned, Lethbury was still in an ecstasy of apprehension.  Feeling reasonably sure of the principal actors, he had centred his fears on incidental possibilities.  The clergyman might have a stroke, or the church might burn down, or there might be something wrong with the license.  He did all that was humanly possible to avert such contingencies, but there remained that incalculable factor known as the hand of God.  Lethbury seemed to feel it groping for him.

In the church it almost had him by the nape.  Mr. Budd was late; and for five immeasurable minutes Lethbury and Jane faced a churchful of conjecture.  Then the bridegroom appeared, flushed but chivalrous, and explaining to his father-in-law under cover of the ritual that he had torn his glove and had to go back for another.