“Gentlemen, if we wish to present our respects to the newly-married
couple, we must make haste.”
And with these words he hurried into the church, followed by all the
others, and soon reached the vestry, which was too small to hold all
the guests invited by Count Ville-Handry. The parish register had been
placed upon a small table; and every one approached, as his turn came,
taking off his gloves before seizing the pen. Fronting the door, and
leaning against one of the cupboards in which the holy vessels are kept,
stood Miss Brandon, now Countess Ville-Handry, having at her side grim
Mrs. Brian, and tall, stiff M. Elgin.
Her admirers had exaggerated nothing. In her white bridal costume she
looked amazingly beautiful; and her whole person exhaled a perfume of
innocence and ingenuous purity.
She was surrounded by eight or ten young persons, who overwhelmed
her with congratulations and compliments. She replied with a slightly
tremulous voice, and casting down her eyes with the long, silky
eyelashes. Count Ville-Handry stood in the centre of the room, swelling
with almost comic happiness; and at every moment, in replying to his
friends, used the words, “My wife,” like a sweet morsel which he rolled
on his tongue.
Still a careful observer might have noticed underneath his victorious
airs a trace of almost painful restraint. From time to time his
face darkened as one of those unlucky, awkward people, who turn up
everywhere, asked him,--
“I hope Miss Henrietta is not complaining much? How very sorry she must
be to be detained at home!”
It is true, that, among these unlucky ones, there were not a few
malicious ones. Nobody was ignorant that something unpleasant had
happened in the count’s family. They had suspected something from the
beginning of the ceremony.
For the count had hardly knelt down by Miss Brandon’s side, on a velvet
cushion, when a servant wearing his livery had come up, and whispered
a few words in his ear. The guests who were nearest had seen him turn
pale, and utter an expression of furious rage.
What had the servant told him?
It became soon known, thanks to the Countess Bois, who went about
telling everybody with inexhaustible volubility, that she had just met
Miss Ville-Handry in the street.
When the last name had been signed, nobody was, therefore, surprised
at seeing Count Ville-Handry give his arm to his wife, and hand her
hurriedly to her carriage,--a magnificent state-carriage. He had
invited some twenty people, former friends of his, to a great wedding-
breakfast; but he seemed to have forgotten them. And once in his
carriage, alone with Mrs. Brian, M. Elgin, and the young countess, he
broke forth in incoherent imprecations and absurd threatenings.
When they reached the palace, he did not wait for the coachman to drive
as usually around the yard, but jumped out, and, rushing up to the
vestibule, cried out,--
“Ernest! send Ernest here!”
Ernest was his own valet, the clever artist to whom he was indebted for
the roses of his complexion. As soon as he appeared, he asked,--
“Where is the young lady?”
“Gone out.”
“When?”
“Immediately after you, sir.”
The young countess, Mrs. Brian, and M. Elgin, had, in the meantime, come
up, and gone into the room in the lower story, where this scene took
place.
“Do you hear that?” he asked them.