ne and crumb of cake with gifts of gold and silver and
precious stones enough to smother the tiny bride; but for once in a
way it paid with a good heart, not merely in obedience to convention,
but for the sake of participating in a unique and delightful scene, a
touching ceremony, the plighting of East and West.

Would the Japanese heiress be married in a kimono with flowers and
fans fixed in an elaborate _coiffure_? Thus the ladies were wondering
as they craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the bride's
procession up the aisle; but, though some even stood on hassocks and
pew seats, few were able to distinguish for certain. She was so very
tiny. At any rate, her six tall bridesmaids were arrayed in Japanese
dress, lovely white creations embroidered with birds and foliage.

It is hard to distinguish anything in the perennial twilight of St.
George's; a twilight symbolic of the new lives which emerge from its
Corinthian portico into that married world about which so much has
been guessed and so little is known.

One thing, however, was visible to all as the pair moved together
up to the altar rails, and that was the size of the bridegroom as
contrasted with the smallness of his bride. He looked like a great
rough bear and she like a silver fairy. There was something intensely
pathetic in the curve of his broad shoulders as he bent over the
little hand to place in its proud position the diminutive golden
circlet which was to unite their two lives.

As they left the church, the organ was playing _Kimi-ga-ya_, the
Japanese national hymn. Nobody recognized it, except the few Japanese
who were present; but Lady Everington, with that exaggeration of the
suitable which is so typical of her, had insisted on its choice as a
voluntary. Those who had heard the tune before and half remembered
it decided that it must come from the "Mikado"; and one stern dowager
went so far as to protest to the rector for permitting such a tune to
desecrate the sacred edifice.

Outside the church stood the bridegroom's brother officers. Through
the gleaming passage of sword-blades, smiling and happy, the strangely
assorted couple entered upon the way of wedlock, as Mr. and Mrs.
Geoffrey Barrington--the shoot of the Fujinami grafted on to one of
the oldest of our noble families.

"Are her parents here?" one lady was asking her neighbour.

"Oh, no; they are both dead, I believe."

"What kind of people are they, do you know? Do Japs have an