“No,” we heard the voice of Mr. Brede reply. “Have you yours?” I think it was a chance shot, but it told all the same. The Major (he was a widower), and Mr. Biggle and I looked at each other; and Mr. Jacobus, on the other side of the grape-trellis, looked at—I don’t know what—and was as silent as we were.

Where is your marriage-licence, married reader? Do you know? Four men, not including Mr. Brede, stood or sate on one side or the other of that grape-trellis, and not one of them knew where his marriage- licence was. Each of us had had one—the Major had had three. But where were they? Where is yours? Tucked in your best-man’s pocket; deposited in his desk, or washed to a pulp in his white waistcoat (if white waistcoats be the fashion of the hour), washed out of existence—can you tell where it is? Can you—unless you are one of those people who frame that interesting document and hang it upon their drawing-room walls?

Mr. Brede’s voice arose, after an awful stillness of what seemed like five minutes, and was, probably, thirty seconds—

“Mr. Jacobus, will you make out your bill at once, and let me pay it? I shall leave by the six o’clock train. And will you also send the waggon for my trunks?”

“I hain’t said I wanted to hev ye leave—” began Mr. Jacobus; but Brede cut him short.

“Bring me your bill.”

“But,” remonstrated Jacobus, “ef ye ain’t—”

“Bring me your bill!” said Mr. Brede.

My wife and I went out for our morning’s walk. But it seemed to us, when we looked at “our view,” as if we could only see those invisible villages of which Brede had told us—that other side of the ridges and rises of which we catch no glimpse from lofty hills or from the heights of human self-esteem. We meant to stay out until the Bredes had taken their departure; but we returned just in time to see Pete, the Jacobus darkey, the blacker of boots, the brusher of coats, the general handy-man of the house, loading the Brede’s trunks on the Jacobus waggon.

And, as we stepped upon the verandah, down came Mrs. Brede, leaning on Mr. Brede’s arm as though she were ill; and it was clear that she had been crying—there were heavy rings about her pretty black eyes. My wife took a step towards her.

“Look at that dress, dear,” she whispered; “she never thought anything like this was going to happen when she put that on.”

It was a pretty, delicate, dainty dress, a graceful, narrow-striped affair. Her hat was trimmed with a narrow- striped silk of the same colour—maroon and white; and in her hand she held a parasol that matched her dress. “She’s had a new dress on twice a day,” said my wife; “but that’s the prettiest yet. Oh, somehow—I’m awfully sorry they’re going!”

But going they were. They moved towards the steps. Mrs. Brede looked towards my wife, and my wife moved towards Mrs. Brede. But the ostracised woman, as though she felt the deep humiliation of her position, turned sharply away, and opened her parasol to shield her eyes from the sun. A shower of rice—a half-pound shower of rice—fell down over her pretty hat and her pretty dress, and fell in a splattering circle on the floor, outlining her skirts, and there it lay in a broad, uneven band, and bright in the morning sun.

Mrs. Brede was in my wife’s arms, sobbing as if her young heart would break.

“Oh, you poor, dear, silly children!” my wife cried, as Mrs. Brede sobbed on her shoulder; “why didn’t you tell us?”