hair shining under the Vandyke hat with
its sweeping azure feather. She was the loveliest thing in that crowded
church, whither people had come from ten miles off to see Squire
Tempest's widow married; but she had a spectral look in the faint light
of the chancel, and seemed as strange an image at this wedding as the
ghost of Don Ramiro at Donna Clara's bridal dance, in Heine's ghastly
ballad.

Violet did not look like the malevolent fairy in the old story, but she
had a look and air which told everyone that this marriage was
distasteful to her.

When all was over, and the register had been signed in the vestry,
Captain Winstanley came up to her, with both hands extended, before all
the company.

"My dear Violet, I am your father now," he said. "You shall not find me
wanting in my duty."

She drew back involuntarily; and then, seeing herself the focus of so
many eyes, suffered him to touch the tips of her fingers.

"You are very kind," she said. "A daughter can have but one father, and
mine is dead. I hope you will be a good husband to my mother. That is
all I can desire of you."

All the best people heard this speech, which was spoken deliberately,
in a low clear voice, and they decided inwardly that whatever kind of
wife Captain Winstanley might have won for himself, he had found his
match in his stepdaughter.

Now came the ride to the Abbey House, which had put on a festive air,
and where smartly-dressed servants were lending their smiles to a day
which they all felt to be the end of a peaceful and comfortable era,
and the beginning of an age of uncertainty. It was like that day at
Versailles when the Third Estate adjourned to the Tennis Court, and the
French Revolution began. People smiled, and were pleased at the new
movement and expectancy in their lives, knowing not what was coming.

"We are bound to be livelier, anyhow, with a military master," said
Pauline.

"A little more company in the house wouldn't come amiss, certainly,"
said Mrs. Trimmer.

"I should like to see our champagne cellar better stocked," remarked
Forbes the butler. "We're behind the times in our sparkling wines."

Captain Winstanley entered the old oak-panelled hall with his wife on
his arm, and felt himself master of such a house as a man might dream
of all his life and never attain. Money could not have bought it. Taste
could not have created it. The mellowing hand of time, the birth and
death of many generations, had made it b