A few weeks before Watson's wedding when he is living at Baker Street with Holmes, Holmes

returns home one afternoon to find a letter in a fancy envelope waiting for him and it was a
request from a nobleman, Lord St. Simon. The letter explains St. Simon would like to talk with
Holmes about the "very painful event" that occurred at his wedding. He says he has already
discussed the situation with Lestrade, the Scotland Yard detective, but he would like to review
the case with Holmes as well. As a result he will be visiting Baker Street at 4:00 p.m. that day.
It's already 3:00 p.m. when Holmes gets the letter, so he spends the next hour reviewing St.
Simon's case. With Watson's help he digs through his archives. He learns Lord Robert
Walsingham de Vere St. Simon is 41 and comes from a long line of famed British nobility.

Watson then directs his attention to recent newspaper mentions of St. Simon. The first paper,
published a few weeks earlier, contains a section announcing the wedding between St. Simon
and a San Francisco woman named Hatty Doran. Her father is Aloysius Doran, a lawyer, and
she is his only daughter.. Other papers provide further details about the wedding: it will take
place at St. George's church; only half a dozen friends are invited to the ceremony; the
reception will take place at the large house Aloysius Doran has rented in London; and the
honeymoon will be taken at Lord Backwater's estate.

Given all of this information, Watson is shocked when Holmes explains Hatty Doran
disappeared at the reception. The men turn their attention to the most recent paper,
published the day before, which gives an account of the disappearance. According to the
report the morning ceremony proceeded without incident, and the small wedding party made
its way to Aloysius Doran's rented house. During breakfast, however, an unidentified woman
forced her way into the house "alleging that she had some claim upon Lord St Simon"; she was
forcibly ejected from the premises but not before causing a huge scene. While the bride ate
breakfast with the wedding party she excused herself and went up to her room. When she
didn't return her father went looking for her, but the servants in the house told him she went
to her room only to grab her coat and hat and then fled the house. Aloysius Doran contacted
the police, and they arrested the woman who caused the incident at the reception, a former
dancer named Flora Millar who has known St. Simon "for some years."

The doorbell rings at Baker Street, and St. Simon enters. Watson observes their visitor is
predictably patrician looking, but he comes off older than his age, and he dresses "to the verge
of foppishness." Holmes and St. Simon make small talk, and then Holmes gets down to
questioning. St. Simon says he and Hatty Doran met—but did not become engaged—in San
Francisco the previous year, while St. Simon was on vacation in America. Her father, "the
richest man on the Pacific slope," made his fortune in gold mining and investing—but she was
20 years old when the family became rich. Before she was catapulted to the upper crust she
was a tomboy who explored the outdoors and knew her way around mining camps. He adds
she has a "volcanic" temper and is tremendously strong-willed. Hatty and her father came to
London during the previous season, and after a few meetings the couple became engaged.
St. Simon asserts nothing was out of the ordinary during their wedding day, but he recalls a
minor incident. As Hatty Doran was walking down the aisle she dropped her bouquet into a
pew, and a man handed it back to her. It didn't seem like a big deal, but when St. Simon
discussed the incident with her in their cab to the reception she made a huge fuss about it. Per
Holmes's questioning, St. Simon confirms the man wasn't a member of the wedding party, just
a member of the public visiting the church that morning. When the couple arrived back to the
house, Hatty went directly to speak with her maid, Alice, whom she had brought from
California and was particularly close with. St. Simon didn't pay much attention to the
conversation, but he heard his wife utter the saying "jumping a claim," which he didn't
understand because it was American slang. After this exchange she sat down for breakfast. Ten
minutes later she "muttered some words of apology" and then fled the house. She was spotted
later walking in Hyde Park with Flora Millar.

Holmes asks St. Simon about his relationship with Millar. He says he has been on "a very
friendly footing" with the dancer, but he has always been kind to her. Still, she has a terrible
temper and is extremely possessive of St. Simon, which is why he planned such a low-key
wedding. He had expected her to show up at Aloysius Doran's house during the reception, so
he hired plainclothes police officers to guard the premises; they threw Millar out after she
showed up and caused a racket. Hatty Doran didn't witness Millar's disruption, yet she was
later spotted with Millar. The police think Millar may have somehow tricked Doran into
leaving, St. Simon says, but that's about as far as their theorizing goes. St. Simon's theory is his
wife decided entering British high society was too intense and too different from her carefree
days in America, so she ran off.