"Well, it's all over now, for better, for worse, as they say.

And I hope very much as it won't be for worse." A loud sniff expressive of grave misgiving succeeded the remark.

The speaker--one of a knot of village women--edged herself a little further forward to look up the long strip of red baize that stretched from the church porch to the lych gate near which she stood.

The two cracked bells were doing their best to noise abroad the importance of the event that had just taken place, which was nothing less than the marriage of Colonel Everard's daughter to Piet Cradock, the man of millions.

Of the latter's very existence none of the villagers had heard till a certain day, but a few weeks before, when he had suddenly appeared at the Hall as the accepted suitor of Nan Everard, whom everyone loved.
She was only twenty, prettiest, gayest, wildest, of the whole wild tribe.
Three sons and eight daughters had the Colonel--a handsome, unruly family, each one of them as lavish, as extravagant, and as undeniably attractive as he was himself.
His wife had been dead for years.