On the other hand, nothing could have exceeded Jasper's kindness and consideration during the days immediately preceding her marriage. It almost seemed as if his super-sensitive soul had received a faint inkling of what was going on in Rosemary's mind. Nothing appeared too onerous, no sacrifice too great where Rosemary's comfort and desires were at stake, and at times--such are the contradictions of a woman's nature--she felt almost impatient with him for his magnanimity, almost obsessed by the unselfishness of his love.
She only saw Peter Blakeney once before she and Jasper left for Budapest, and that was on the day of her wedding. By one of those involuntary blunders so peculiar to dim-sighted lovers, Jasper Tarkington had asked Peter to be his best man. What it was that had induced Peter to accept, Rosemary could not conjecture. His impulses had always been strange and unaccountable, and this one was more unaccountable than most. Perhaps he merely wished to pander to his own mad desire to see her once again, perhaps it was just a semi-barbaric instinct in him that pushed him to self-torture. Rosemary by now had sufficient hold over herself to meet him calmly; not one line in her beautiful face, not one look in her haunting eyes, betrayed what she felt, after the wedding ceremony, when she accepted Peter's warmly expressed good wishes for her happiness. Even her sensitive ear could not detect the faintest note of irony or bitterness in his voice. After that he said a few words about the projected journey to Hungary, about which Jasper had spoken to him. She would be seeing his relatives there--the Imreys, the Heves. Elsa Imrey was his mother's sister and such a dear, and Philip used to be a jolly boy; but Rosemary knew them all. She knew she would be made very welcome. Peter ended by speaking with great earnestness about his little cousin Anna Heves; her father, who had been Mrs. Blakeney's only brother, was dead, and Peter had an idea that Anna was not altogether happy.
"She has left home for some reason I can't quite fathom," he said, "and lives now at Kolozsvár--I mean Cluj. She writes to me sometimes, and when I know the exact day when you will be in Cluj I will write and tell her to go and see you. I suppose you will put up at the 'Pannonia.'"