He was at a wedding banquet. The banquet room was decorated with masses of ivory and white roses everywhere he looked. Millicent Shellridge, dressed in white and fading into a huge bank of roses, sang a ballad for the newlyweds. Peter and Jimmy and Richard, his friends from Oxford, were there with wives and daughters. Each of them came up and demanded that Toby dance with their daughters, faceless young women in white.
Toby keep pushing through the dancers, looking for the bride.
Then everyone was pushing towards the entrance hall, which was like the entrance hall at Stacey Manor, except that it was entirely white and ivory. The bride was coming down the stairs to leave for the honeymoon. Yet she was still dressed in a bridal gown and completely veiled. At the curve of the staircase, she paused and waved a startlingly red bouquet of roses at the crowd below. Somehow Toby was right at the center of the hall.