“I shall be very proud of my wife when I can dare to call her mine. That will be pride enough for me,” answered John, drawing her a little nearer to his heart. “And now, I suppose, I ought to go and see Sampson, and tell him that everything is definitely settled. When are we to be married, love? My cousin died on the 20th of January. We ought not to delay our marriage longer than the end of this month.”
“Let us be married on the last day of the month,” said Laura. “It is the most solemn day in all the year. We shall never forget the anniversary of our wedding if it is on that day.”
“I should never forget it in any case,” answered John Treverton. “Let it be on that day, love. The closing year shall unite me to you for life. I shall see Mr. Clare tonight, and arrange everything.”
They were a long time saying “Goodbye,” and just at the last John Treverton suggested that Laura should put on her hat and jacket and walk to the gates with him, so the first “Goodbye” was wasted trouble. They were a long time walking to the gates, and the early winter night had come, and the stars were shining when they reluctantly parted. Laura tripped along the avenue with as light a foot as Juliet’s when she came to the friar’s cell to be married; John Treverton went slowly down the road towards Hazlehurst village, with his head bent upon his breast, and all the joy faded out of his face.
He found Mr. Sampson and his sister just sitting down to dinner, and was welcomed with enthusiasm by both.
“Upon my soul, you’re a most extraordinary fellow,” exclaimed the lawyer, after a good deal of handshaking. “You run off in no end of a hurry, promising to come back in a week or two at latest, and for six months we see no more of you; and you don’t even favour your family solicitor with a line to say why you don’t come. There are not many men in England who would play fast and loose with such chances as yours. Your cousin, when he made that curious will of his, told me you had been wild, but I was not prepared for such wildness as this.”
“Really, Tom,” remonstrated Miss Sampson, blushing the salmon pink peculiar to sandy-haired beauty, “you have no right to talk to Mr. Treverton like that.”
“Yes, I have,” answered Sampson, who prided himself on his open manner—his “bonnomy,” as he called it; “I have the right given me by a genuine interest in his affairs—the interest of a friend rather than a lawyer. You don’t suppose it’s for the sake of the six-and-eightpences I take so much upon myself, Lizzie? No, it is because I have a sincere regard for my old client’s kinsman, and a disinterested anxiety for his welfare.”
“I think you may make your mind easy about me,” said John, without any appearance of elation; “I am going to be married on the last day of this month, and I want you to prepare the settlement.”
“Bravo!” cried Tom Sampson, flourishing his napkin; “I’m almost as glad as if I’d backed the winner of the double event, and woke up to find myself worth twenty thousand pounds. My dear fellow, I congratulate you. The Hazlehurst property is a good eight thousand a year. There’s three thousand in ground rents in Beechampton, and your dividends from railways and consols bring your income to a clean fourteen thousand.”
“If Miss Malcolm were penniless, I should be as proud of winning her as I am now,” said John, gravely.
“That’s a very gentlemanlike way of looking at it,” exclaimed the lawyer, as much as to say, “We know all about it; you are bound to say that kind of thing.”
Miss Sampson looked down at her plate, and felt that appetite was gone forever. It was foolishness, no doubt, to feel so keen a pang; but girlhood is prone to foolishness, and Eliza Sampson had not yet owned to thirty. She had known from the first that John Treverton was to marry Laura Malcolm, and yet she had allowed herself to indulge in secret worship at his shrine. He was handsome and attractive, and Miss Sampson had seen so few young men who were either one or the other, that she may be forgiven for fixing her young unhackneyed affection on the first distinguished stranger who came within the narrow orbit of her colourless life.
She had lived under the same roof with him; she had handed him his coffee in the morning his tea—ah, how carefully creamed and sugared! in the evening. She had studied his tastes, and catered for him with unfailing care. She had played Rosellen’s Reverie in G for his delectation every evening during his two visits. She had sung his favourite ballads, and if her voice sometimes failed her on the high notes, she made up in pathos what she wanted in power. These things are not easily to be forgotten by a youthful mind fed upon three-volume novels, and naturally prone to sentiment.
“Our wedding will be a very quiet affair,” said John Treverton, presently; “Laura wishes it to be so, and I am of her mind. I shall be glad if you will kindly refrain from talking about it to anyone, Sampson, and you too, Miss Sampson. We don’t want to be objects of interest in the village.”
“I will be as dumb as a skin of parchment,” answered the lawyer, “and I know that Eliza will be the soul of discretion.”
Eliza looked up shyly at their guest, her white eyelashes quivering with emotion.
“I ought to congratulate you, Mr. Treverton,” she faltered, “but it is all
