The use of expressive means and stylistic devices in the given story

The author uses great amount of stylistic devices to describe characters, setting and the events themselves.

Among lexical expressive means we can see:

-      Epithets (odorous masses, well-bred voices, crisp garments, drawling words, his own innermost, unmitigated, arid unbedecked self, poor consolation, swift, limpid, upward look, so childlike and worshipful, convincing beauty)

-      Metaphors (White favors like stars upon their coats shone through the gloom of the apartment)

-      Hyperbole ( It seemed that in his nostrils was still the scent of the flowers)

-      Simile (He had absorbed the oblation as a desert drinks the rain; How she fluttered like a snared bird when he laid his mightiness at her feet! )

-      Oxymoron (sullen exultation, exhibition of doubtful erudition)

As for the syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices:

             - Polysyndeton (It seemed that in his nostrils was still the scent of the flowers that had been banked in odorous masses about the church, and in his ears the lowpitched hum of a thousand well-bred voices, the rustle of crisp garments, and, most insistently recurring, the drawling words of the minister irrevocably binding her to another)

             - asyndeton (As he slowly unbuttoned his gloves, there passed through Trysdale's mind a swift, scarifying retrospect of the last few hours, Indeed, his conceit had crumbled; Its last prop was gone)

             - repetition (So childlike and so worshipful, and (he would once have sworn) so sincere; How glad, how shy, how tremulous she was! How she fluttered!)

We can see here cases of irony:

            - (Without protest, he allowed her to twine about his brow this spurious bay of Spanish scholarship.

The author employs frequently rhetoric questions to show the inner world of the characters

            - (Vanity and conceit?, But why ?, Why had it ended thus?  If…

A combination of these expressive means and stylistic devices makes the author's style highly original and easily recognizable.