himself wondering whether Lord
Montbarry's family would succeed in stopping the marriage after all.
And more than this, he was conscious of a growing desire to see the
infatuated man himself. Every day during the brief interval before the
wedding, he looked in at the club, on the chance of hearing some news.
Nothing had happened, so far as the club knew. The Countess's position
was secure; Montbarry's resolution to be her husband was unshaken.
They were both Roman Catholics, and they were to be married at the
chapel in Spanish Place. So much the Doctor discovered about them--and
no more.

On the day of the wedding, after a feeble struggle with himself, he
actually sacrificed his patients and their guineas, and slipped away
secretly to see the marriage. To the end of his life, he was angry
with anybody who reminded him of what he had done on that day!

The wedding was strictly private. A close carriage stood at the church
door; a few people, mostly of the lower class, and mostly old women,
were scattered about the interior of the building. Here and there
Doctor Wybrow detected the faces of some of his brethren of the club,
attracted by curiosity, like himself. Four persons only stood before
the altar--the bride and bridegroom and their two witnesses. One of
these last was an elderly woman, who might have been the Countess's
companion or maid; the other was undoubtedly her brother, Baron Rivar.
The bridal party (the bride herself included) wore their ordinary
morning costume. Lord Montbarry, personally viewed, was a middle-aged
military man of the ordinary type: nothing in the least remarkable
distinguished him either in face or figure. Baron Rivar, again, in his
way was another conventional representative of another well-known type.
One sees his finely-pointed moustache, his bold eyes, his
crisply-curling hair, and his dashing carriage of the head, repeated
hundreds of times over on the Boulevards of Paris. The only noteworthy
point about him was of the negative sort--he was not in the least like
his sister. Even the officiating priest was only a harmless,
humble-looking old man, who went through his duties resignedly, and
felt visible rheumatic difficulties every time he bent his knees. The
one remarkable person, the Countess herself, only raised her veil at
the beginning of the ceremony, and presented nothing in her plain dress
that was worth a second look. Never, on the face of it, was there a
less interesting and l