“There is no such gulf as what you speak of. All that is mostly gone by, and a nobleman in England, though he has advantages as a gentleman, is no more than a gentleman. But that has nothing to do with what I am saying now. I shall never forget my journey to Devonshire. I won’t pretend to say now that I regret its result.”
“I am quite sure you don’t.”
“No; I do not;—though I thought then that I should regret it always. But remember this, Miss Rowley—that you can never ask me to do anything that I will not, if possible, do for you. You are in some little difficulty now.”
“It will disappear, Mr. Glascock. Difficulties always do.”
“But we will do anything that we are wanted to do; and should a certain event take place—”
“It will take place some day.”
“Then I hope that we may be able to make Mr. Stanbury and his wife quite at home at Monkhams.” After that he took Nora’s hand and kissed it, and at that moment Caroline came back to them.
“Tomorrow, Mr. Glascock,” she said, “you will, I believe, be at liberty to kiss everybody; but today you should be more discreet.”
It was generally admitted among the various legations in Florence that there had not been such a wedding in the City of Flowers since it had become the capital of Italia. Mr. Glascock and Miss Spalding were married in the chapel of the legation—a legation chapel on the ground floor having been extemporised for the occasion. This greatly enhanced the pleasantness of the thing, and saved the necessity of matrons and bridesmaids packing themselves and their finery into close fusty carriages. A portion of the guests attended in the chapel, and the remainder, when the ceremony was over, were found strolling about the shady garden. The whole affair of the breakfast was very splendid and lasted some hours. In the midst of this the bride and bridegroom were whisked away with a pair of grey horses to the railway station, and before the last toast of the day had been proposed by the Belgian Councillor of Legation, they were halfway up the Apennines on their road to Bologna. Mr. Spalding behaved himself like a man on the occasion. Nothing was spared in the way of expense, and when he made that celebrated speech, in which he declared that the republican virtue of the New World had linked itself in a happy alliance with the aristocratic splendour of the Old, and went on with a simile about the lion and the lamb, everybody accepted it with good humour in spite of its being a little too long for the occasion.
“It has gone off very well, mamma; has it not?” said Nora, as she returned home with her mother to her lodgings.
“Yes, my dear; much, I fancy, as these things generally do.”
“I thought it was so nice. And she looked so very well. And he was so pleasant, and so much like a gentleman;—not noisy, you know—and yet not too serious.”
“I dare say, my love.”
“It is easy enough, mamma, for a girl to be married, for she has nothing to do but to wear her clothes and look as pretty as she can. And if she cries and has a red nose it is forgiven her. But a man has so difficult a part to play. If he tries to carry himself as though it were not a special occasion, he looks like a fool that way; and if he is very special, he looks like a fool the other way. I thought Mr. Glascock did it very well.”
“To tell you the truth, my dear, I did not observe him.”
“I did—narrowly. He hadn’t tied his cravat at all nicely.”
“How you could think of his cravat, Nora, with such memories as you must have, and such regrets, I cannot understand.”
“Mamma, my memories of Mr. Glascock are pleasant memories, and as for regrets—I have not one. Can I regret, mamma, that I did not marry a man whom I did not love—and that I rejected him when I knew that I loved another? You cannot mean that, mamma.”
“I know this;—that I was thinking all the time how proud I should have been, and how much more fortunate he would have been, had you been standing there instead of that American young woman.” As she said this Lady Rowley burst into tears, and Nora could only answer her mother by embracing her. They were alone together, their party having been too large for one carriage, and Sir Marmaduke having taken his two younger daughters. “Of course I feel it,” said Lady Rowley, through her tears. “It would have been such a position for my child! And that young man—without a shilling in the world; and writing in that way, just for bare bread!” Nora had nothing more to say. A feeling that in herself would have been base, was simply affectionate and maternal in her mother. It was impossible that she should make her mother see it as she saw it.
There was but one intervening day and then the Rowleys returned to England. There had been, as it were, a tacit agreement among them that, in spite of all their troubles, their holiday should be a holiday up to the time of the Glascock marriage. Then must commence at once the stern necessity of their return home—home, not only to England, but to those antipodean islands from which it was too probable that some of them might never come back. And the difficulties in their way seemed to be almost insuperable. First of all there was to be the parting from Emily Trevelyan. She had determined to remain in Florence, and had written to her husband saying that she would do so, and declaring her willingness to go out to him, or to receive him in Florence at any time and in any manner that he might appoint. She had taken this as a first
