The Small House at Allington

Valentine's day? I wonder whether it was so settled on purpose, because of the day. Oh, dear, I used to think so often of the letter that I should get from him on this day, when he would tell me that I was his valentine. Well; he's got another—valen—tine—now.' So much she said with articulate voice, and then she broke down, bursting out into convulsive sobs, and crying in her mother's arms as though she would break her heart. And yet her heart was not broken, and she was still strong in that resolve which she had made, that her grief should not overpower her. As she had herself said, the thing would not have been so difficult, had she not been weakened by illness.

'Lily, my darling; my poor, ill-used darling.'

'No, mamma, I won't be that.' And she struggled grievously to get the better of the hysterical attack which had overpowered her. 'I won't be regarded as ill-used; not as specially ill-used. But I am your darling, your own darling. Only I wish you'd beat me and thump me when I'm such a fool, instead of pitying me. It's a great mistake being soft to people when they make fools of themselves. There, Bell; there's your stupid book, and I won't have any more of it. I believe it was that that did it.' And she pushed the book away from her.

After this little scene she said no further word about Crosbie and his bride on that day, but turned the conversation towards the prospect of their new house at Guestwick.

'It will be a great comfort to be nearer Dr Crofts; won't it, Bell?'

'I don't know,' said Bell.

'Because if we are ill, he won't have such a terrible distance to come.'

'That will be a comfort for him, I should think,' said Bell, very demurely.

In the evening the first volume of the French Revolution had been procured, and Lily stuck to her reading with laudable perseverance; till at eight her mother insisted on her going to bed, queen as she was.

'I don't believe a bit, you know, that the king was such a bad man as that,' she said.

'I do,' said Bell.

'Ah, that's because you're a radical. I never will believe that kings are so much worse than other people. As for Charles the First, he was about the best man in history.'

This was an old subject of dispute; but Lily on the present occasion was allowed her own way,—as being an invalid.

XLV. Valentine's Day in London

The fourteenth of February in London was quite as black, and cold, and as wintersome as it was at Allington, and was, perhaps, somewhat more melancholy in its coldness. Nevertheless Lady Alexandrina de Courcy looked as bright as bridal finery could make her, when she got out of her carriage and walked into St. James's church at eleven o'clock on that morning.

It had been finally arranged that the marriage should take place in London. There were certainly many reasons which would have made a marriage from Courcy Castle more convenient. The de Courcy family were all assembled at their country family residence, and could therefore have been present at the ceremony without cost or trouble. The castle too was warm with the warmth of life, and the pleasantness of home would have lent a grace to the departure of one of the daughters of the house. The retainers and servants were there, and something of the rich mellowness of a noble alliance might have been felt, at any rate by Crosbie, at a marriage so celebrated. And it must have been acknowledged, even by Lady de Courcy, that the house in Portman Square was very cold—that a marriage from thence would be cold,—that there could be no hope of attaching to it any honour and glory, or of making it resound with fashionable eclat in the columns of the Morning Post. But then, had they been married in the country, the earl would have been there; whereas there was no probability of his travelling up to London for the purpose of being present on such an occasion.

The earl was very terrible in these days, and Alexandrina, as she became confidential in her communications with her future husband, spoke of him as of an ogre, who could not by any means be avoided in all the concerns of life, but whom one might shun now and again by some subtle device and careful arrangement of favourable circumstances. Crosbie had more than once taken upon himself to hint that he did not specially regard the ogre, seeing that for the future he could keep himself altogether apart from the malicious monster's dominions.

'He will not come to me in our new home,' he had said to his love, with some little touch of affection. But to this view of the case Lady Alexandrina had demurred. The ogre in question was not only her parent, but was also a noble peer, and she could not agree to any arrangement by which their future connection with the earl, and with