Part 37 (1/2)

BRITISH PEER WINS AMERICAN BRIDE

His Lords.h.i.+p Tenth Earl of Brinstead to Wed One of Red Gap's Fairest Daughters

My hands so shook that in quick subterfuge I dropped the sheet, then stooped for it, trusting to control myself before I again raised my face. Mercifully the others were diverted by the journal. It was seized from me, pa.s.sed from hand to hand, the incredible words read aloud by each in turn. They jested of it!

”Amazing chaps, your pressmen!” Thus the tenth Earl of Brinstead, while I pinched myself viciously to bring back my lost aplomb. ”Speedy beggars, what, what! Never knew it myself till last night. She would and she wouldn't.”

”I think you knew,” said the lady. Stricken as I was I noted that she eyed him rather strangely, quite as if she felt some decent respect for him.

”Marriage is serious,” boomed the Mixer.

”Don't blame her, don't blame her--swear I don't!” returned his lords.h.i.+p. ”Few days to think it over--quite right, quite right. Got to know their own minds, my word!”

While their attention was thus mercifully diverted from me, my own world by painful degrees resumed its stability. I mean to say, I am not the fainting sort, but if I were, then I should have keeled over at my first sight of that journal. But now I merely recovered my gla.s.s of champagne and drained it. Rather pigged it a bit, I fancy. Badly needing a stimulant I was, to be sure.

They now discussed details: the ceremony--that sort of thing.

”Before a registrar, quickest way,” said his lords.h.i.+p.

”Nonsense! Church, of course!” rumbled the Mixer very arbitrarily.

”Quite so, then,” a.s.sented his lords.h.i.+p. ”Get me the rector of the parish--a vicar, a curate, something of that sort.”

”Then the breakfast and reception,” suggested Mrs. Effie with a meaning glance at me before she turned to the lady. ”Of course, dearest, your own tiny nest would never hold your host of friends----”

”I've never noticed,” said the other quickly. ”It's always seemed big enough,” she added in pensive tones and with downcast eyes.

”Oh, not large enough by half,” put in Belknap-Jackson, ”Most charming little home-nook but worlds too small for all your well-wishers.” With a glance at me he narrowed his eyes in friendly calculation. ”I'm somewhat puzzled myself--Suppose we see what the capable Ruggles has to suggest.”

”Let Ruggles suggest something by all means!” cried Mrs. Effie.

I mean to say, they both quite thought they knew what I would suggest, but it was nothing of the sort. The situation had entirely changed.

Quite another sort of thing it was. Quickly I resolved to fling them both aside. I, too, would be a dead sportsman.

”I was about to suggest,” I remarked, ”that my place here is the only one at all suitable for the breakfast and reception. I can promise that the affair will go off smartly.”

The two had looked up with such radiant expectation at my opening words and were so plainly in a state at my conclusion that I dare say the future Countess of Brinstead at once knew what. She flashed them a look, then eyed me with quick understanding.

”Great!” she exclaimed in a hearty American manner. ”Then that's settled,” she continued briskly, as both Belknap-Jackson and Mrs.

Effie would have interposed ”Ruggles shall do everything: take it off our shoulders--ices, flowers, invitations.”

”The invitation list will need great care, of course,” remarked Belknap-Jackson with a quite savage glance at me.

”But you just called him 'the capable Ruggles,'” insisted the fiancee.

”We shall leave it all to him. How many will you ask, Ruggles?” Her eyes flicked from mine to Belknap-Jackson.

”Quite almost every one,” I answered firmly.