As Eleanor continued struggling to rise from the pavement, wedding guests exchanged increasingly uncomfortable glances, several whispering urgently among themselves about the shocking, disproportionate cruelty they had just witnessed. "Did you see how she just slapped that poor woman?" one guest whispered to her companion, her voice carrying genuine horror.
"I've never seen anything like this at a wedding," another guest murmured, glancing nervously toward Priscilla and Damien, who remained standing near the ceremony's decorative arch, seemingly oblivious to the mounting disapproval building steadily throughout the crowd.
A few guests finally rose fully from their seats, clearly intending to help Eleanor regain her footing, though their hesitant movement was interrupted suddenly by the distant, sharp sound of screeching tires drawing everyone's attention toward the estate's main driveway.
Eleanor remained kneeling on the pavement, her breathing labored slightly from the fall, though something in her expression carried a strange, quiet calm that seemed entirely disproportionate to the humiliation she had just endured in front of dozens of stunned witnesses.