“My dearest girl, you know I would not desert you at such a crisis of your life for forty Brightons,” cried Celia, who had lofty ideas about friendship; “and now about your wedding gown? That is the most important point of all.”
“It is ordered.”
“You did not mention it just now.”
“Did I not? I am going to be married in one of the gowns I ordered for travelling, a mixture of grey silk and velvet, the jacket trimmed with chinchilla. I think it will be very handsome.”
Celia fell back in her chair as if she were going to faint.
“No wedding gown!” she cried; “no trousseau, and no wedding gown! This is indeed an ill-omened marriage! Well may poor Edward talk.”
Laura flushed indignantly at this last sentence.
“Pray what has your brother been saying against my marriage?” she asked, haughtily.
“Well, dear, you cannot expect him to feel particularly pleasant about it, knowing—as you must know—how he has gone on doting upon you, and hoping against hope, for the last three years. I don’t want to make you unhappy, but I must confess that Edward has a very bad opinion of Mr. Treverton.”
“I daresay Mr. Treverton will manage to exist without Edward’s good opinion.”
“He thinks there is something so utterly mysterious in his conduct—something insulting to you in the fact of his holding himself aloof so long, and then coming back at the last moment, just in time to secure the estate!”
“I am the best judge of Mr. Treverton’s conduct,” answered Laura, deeply wounded. “If I can trust him other people may spare themselves the trouble of speculating upon his motives.”
“And you can trust him?” asked Celia, anxiously.
“With all my heart and soul.”
“Then have a proper wedding gown,” exclaimed Celia, as if the whole question of bliss or woe were involved in that one detail.
When next Miss Malcolm met Edward Clare there was a coolness in her greeting which the young man could not mistake.
“What have I done to offend you, Laura?” he asked, piteously.
“I am offended with everyone who doubts the honour of my future husband,” she answered.
“I’m sorry for that,” he said, gloomily. “A man cannot help his thoughts.”
“A man can hold his tongue,” said Laura.
“Well, I will be silent henceforth. Goodbye.”
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere, anywhere out of the world; that is to say out of this little world of Hazlehurst. I think I am going to London. I shall take a lodging close to the British Museum, and work hard at literature. It is time I made my mark.”
Laura thought so too. Edward had been talking of making his mark for the last five years, but the mark as yet was a very feeble one.
Next day he was gone, and Laura had a sense of relief in his absence.
Celia stayed at the Manor House during the time before the wedding. She was always in attendance upon the lovers, drove with them, walked with them, sat by the fire with them at the cheery, dusky afternoon tea time, when those mysterious shadows that looked like guardian angels came and went upon the walls. John Treverton seemed to have no objection to Celia’s company, he rather courted it, even. He was not an ardent lover, Celia thought; and yet it would have been difficult to doubt that he was deeply in love. Never since that first evening had Laura’s head rested against his breast, never since then had he given full and unrestrained utterance to his passion. His manner was full of reverent affection; as if he respected his betrothed almost too deeply to be lavish in the expression of warmer feeling; as if she stood so high above him in his thoughts of her that love was a kind of worship.
“I think I should like a more demonstrative lover,” said Celia, with a critical air. “Mr. Treverton is so awfully serious.”
“And now that you have seen more of him, Celia, are you still inclined to think that he is mercenary; that it is the estate and not me he cares for?” asked Laura, with no fear as to the answer.
“No, dear, I honestly believe that he adores you, that he is dreadfully, desperately, almost despairingly, in love with you,” answered Celia, very seriously, “but still he is not my style of lover. He is too melancholy.”
Laura had no answer to this objection. As the days had hurried on towards the end of this eventful year her lover’s spirits had assuredly not grown lighter. He was full of thought, curiously absentminded at times. She, too, grew grave in sympathy with him.
“It is such a solemn crisis in our lives,” she thought. “Sometimes I feel as if all things could not go happily to the end, as if something must happen to part us, at the very last, on the eve of our wedding day.”
The eve of the wedding came, and brought no calamity. It was a very quiet evening. The lovers dined together at the vicarage, and walked to the Manor House afterwards, alone with each other, almost for the first time since the night of their betrothal. Everything had been arranged for tomorrow’s wedding. Such a quiet wedding! No one had been invited except Mr. Sampson and his sister. The vicar’s wife was to be present, of course. She would in a manner represent the bride’s mother. Celia was to be the only bridesmaid. They were to be married by licence, and no one in the village had as yet any inkling of the event. The servants at the Manor House had only been told the date of the marriage within the last two days, and had been forbidden to talk about it; and as they were old servants, who had long learned to identify themselves with “the family,” they were not likely to disobey Miss Malcolm’s orders.
The house, always the perfection of neatness, had been swept and garnished for this important occasion. The chintz covers had been taken
