thought that just on this
one occasion you might have managed it," she said to him, trying to
mingle a tone of love with the sarcasm which at such a crisis was
natural to her. He simply reminded her of the promise which he had
made to her in the spring. He thought it best not to break through
arrangements which had been fixed. When she told him of one very
slippery member of the bevy,--slippery, not as to character, but
in reference to the movements of her family,--he suggested that no
one would know the difference if only nineteen were to be clustered
round the bride's train. "Don't you know that they must be in pairs?"
"Will not nine pairs suffice?" he asked. "And thus make one of them
an enemy for ever by telling her that I wish to dispense with her
services!"

But it was of no use. "Dispense with them altogether," he said,
looking her full in the face. "The twenty will not quarrel with
you. My object is to marry you, and I don't care twopence for the
bridesmaids." There was something so near to a compliment in this,
that she was obliged to accept it. And she had, too, begun to
perceive that Lord Llwddythlw was a man not easily made to change
his mind. She was quite prepared for this in reference to her future
life. A woman, she thought, might be saved much trouble by having
a husband whom she was bound to obey. But in this matter of her
marriage ceremony,--this last affair in which she might be presumed
to act as a free woman,--she did think it hard that she might not
be allowed to have her own way. The bridegroom, however, was firm.
If Thursday, the 13th, did not suit her, he would be quite ready on
Thursday, the 20th. "There wouldn't be one of them left in London,"
said Lady Amaldina. "What on earth do you think that they are to do
with themselves?"

But all the bevy were true to her. Lady Amelia Beaudesert was a
difficulty. Her mother insisted on going to a far-away Bavarian
lake on which she had a villa;--but Lady Amelia at the last moment
surrendered the villa rather than break up the bevy, and consented
to remain with a grumpy old aunt in Essex till an opportunity should
offer. It may be presumed, therefore, that it was taken to be a great
thing to be one of the bevy. It is, no doubt, a pleasant thing for
a girl to have it asserted in all the newspapers that she is, by
acknowledgment, one of the twenty most beautiful unmarried ladies in
Great Britain.

Lady Frances was of course one of the bevy. But ther