The affair proceeded rapidly, as such affairs should do where there is
no reason for delay. There was no more talk of Birmingham. The journey
which was to have been taken in a few days was not spoken of again. The
external arrangements advanced well, so many as there were anxious about
this part of the matter, and accomplished in habits of business. Mr
Rowland was happy to let the corner-house to Mr Hope, not even taking
advantage, as his lady advised, of its being peculiarly fit for a
surgeon's residence, from its having a door round the corner (made to be
a surgery-door!), to raise the rent. Mr Rowland behaved handsomely
about everything, rent, alterations, painting, and papering, and laying
out the garden anew. Mr Grey bestirred himself to get the affairs at
Birmingham settled; and he was soon enabled to inform Mr Hope that
Hester's fortune was ascertained, and that it was smaller than could
have been wished. He believed his cousins would have seventy pounds
a-year each, and no more. It was some compensation for the mortifying
nature of this announcement, that Mr Hope evidently did not care at all
about the matter. He was not an ambitious, nor yet a luxurious man: his
practice supplied an income sufficient for the ease of young married
people, and it was on the increase.
No one seemed to doubt for a moment that Margaret would live with her
sister. There was no other home for her; she and Hester had never been
parted; there seemed no reason for their parting now, and every
inducement for their remaining together. Margaret did not dream of
objecting to this: she only made it a condition that fifty pounds of her
yearly income should go into the family-stock, thus saving her from
obligation to any one for her maintenance. Living was so cheap in
Deerbrook, that Margaret was assured that she would render herself quite
independent by paying fifty pounds a-year for her share of the household
expenses, and reserving twenty for her personal wants.
Both the sisters were surprised to find how much pleasure they took in
the preparations for this marriage. They could not have believed it,
and, but that they were too happy to feel any kind of contempt, they
would have despised themselves for it. But such contempt would have
been misplaced. All things are according to the ideas and feelings with
which they are connected; and if, as old George Herbert says, dusting a
room is an act of religious grace when it is done from a feeling of
religious duty, furnishing a house is a process of high enjoyment when
it is the preparation of a home for happy love. The dwelling is hung
all round with bright anticipations, and crowded with blissful thoughts,
spoken by none, perhaps, but present to all. On this table, and by this
snug fireside, will the cheerful winter breakfast go forward, when each
is about to enter on the gladsome business of the day; and that sofa
will be drawn out, and those window-curtains will be closed, when the
intellectual pleasures of the evening--the rewards of the laborious
day--begin. Those ground-windows will stand open all the summer noon,
and the flower stands will be gay and fragrant; and the shaded parlour
will be the cool retreat of the wearied husband, when he comes in to
rest from his professional toils. There will stand the books destined
to refresh and refine his higher tastes; and there the music with which
the wife will indulge him. Here will they first feel what it is to have
a home of their own--where they will first enjoy the privacy of it, the
security, the freedom, the consequence in the eyes of others, the
sacredness in their own. Here they will first exercise the graces of
hospitality, and the responsibility of control. Here will they feel
that they have attained the great resting-place of their life--the
resting-place of their individual lot, but only the starting-point of
their activity. Such is the work of furnishing a house once in a
lifetime. It may be a welcome task to the fine lady, decking her
drawing-room anew, to gratify her ambition, or divert her _ennui_--it
may be a satisfactory labour to the elderly couple, settling themselves
afresh when their children are dispersed abroad, and it becomes
necessary to discard the furniture that the boys have battered and
spoiled--it may be a refined amusement to the selfish man of taste,
wishing to prolong or recall the pleasures of foreign travel; but to
none is it the conscious delight that it is to young lovers and their
sympathising friends, whether the scene be the two rooms of the hopeful
young artisan, about to bring home his bride from service; or the palace
of a nobleman, enriched with intellectual luxuries for the lady of his
adoration; or the quiet abode of an unambitious professional man, whose
aim is privacy and comfort.
Margaret's delight in the process of preparation was the most intense of
all that was felt, except perhaps by one person. Mrs Grey and Sophia
enjoyed the bustle, and the consequence, and the exercise of their
feminine talents, and the gossip of the village, and the spitefulness of
Mrs Rowland's criticisms, when she had recovered from her delight at
her brother's escape from Hester, and had leisure to be offended at Mr
Hope's marrying into the Grey connexion so decidedly. The children
relished the mystery of buying their presents secretly, and hiding them
from their cousins, till the day before the wedding. Sydney was proud
to help Margaret in training the chrysanthemums, putting the garden into
winter trim, and in planting round the walls of the surgery with large
evergreens. Mr Grey came down almost every evening to suggest and
approve; and Morris left her needle (now busy from morning till night in
Hester's service) to admire, and to speak her wishes, when desired,
about the preparations in her department. Morris, another maid, and a
foot-boy, were the only servants; and Morris was to have everything as
she liked best for her own region. But Margaret was as eager and
interested as all the rest together. Her heart was light for her
sister; and for the first time since she was capable of thought, she
believed that Hester was going to be happy. Her own gain was almost too
great for gratitude: a home, a brother, and relief from the
responsibility of her sister's peace--as often as she thought of these
blessings, she looked almost as bright as Hester herself.
How was Mr Hope, all this while? Well, and growing happier every day.
He believed himself a perfectly happy man, and looked back with wonder
to the struggle which it had cost him to accept his present lot. He was
not only entirely recovered from his accident before the rich month of
October came in, but truly thankful for it as the means of bringing to
his knowledge, sooner at least, the devoted affection which he had
inspired. It cannot but be animating, flattering, delightful to a man
of strong domestic tendencies, to know himself the object of the
exclusive attachment of a strong-minded and noble-hearted woman: and
when, in addition to this, her society affords the delight of mental
accomplishment and personal beauty, such as Hester's, he must be a churl
indeed if he does not greatly enjoy the present, and indulge in sweet
anticipations for the future. Hope also brought the whole power of his
will to bear upon his circumstances. He dwelt upon all the happiest
features of his lot; and, in his admiration of Hester, thought as little
as he could of Margaret. He had the daily delight of seeing how he
constituted the new-born happiness of her whose life was to be devoted
to him: he heard of nothing but rejoicings and blessings, and fully
believed himself the happy man that every one declared him. He dwelt on
the prospect of a home full of domestic attachment, of rational pursuit,
of intellectual resource; and looked forward to a life of religious
usefulness, of vigorous devotedness to others, of which he trusted that
his first act of self-sacrifice and its consequences were the earnest
and the pledge. He had never for a moment repented what he had done;
and now, when he hastily recurred to the struggle it had cost him, it
was chiefly to moralise on the short-sightedness of men in their wishes,
and to be grateful for his own present satisfaction. A few cold
misgivings had troubled him, and continued to trouble him, if Hester at
any time looked at all less bright and serene than usual: but he
concluded that these were merely the cloud-shadows which necessarily
chequer all the sunshine of this world. He told himself that when two
human beings become closely dependent on each other, their peace must
hang upon the variations in one another's moods; and that moods must
vary in all mortals. He persuaded himself that this was a necessary
consequence of the relation, and to be received as a slight set-off
against the unfathomable blessings of sympathy. He concluded that he
had deceived himself about his feelings for Margaret: he must have been
mistaken; for he could now receive from her the opening confidence of a
sister; he could cordially agree to the arrangement of her living with
them; he could co-operate with her in the preparation for the coming
time, without any emotion which was inconsistent with his duty to
Hester. With unconscious prudence, he merely said this to himself, and
let it pass, reverting to his beautiful, his happy, his own Hester, and
the future years over which her image spread its sunshine. The one
person who relished the task of preparation more than Margaret herself
was Hope. Every advance in the work seemed to bring him nearer to the
source of the happiness he felt. Every day of which they marked the
lapse appeared to open wider the portals of that home which he was now
more than ever habituated to view as the sanctuary of duty, of holiness,
and of peace. All remarked on Mr Hope's altered looks. The shyness
and coldness with which he had seemed to receive the first
congratulations on his engagement, and which excited wonder in many, and
uneasiness in a few, had now given place to a gaiety only subdued by a
more tender happiness. Even Mrs Grey need no longer watch his
countenance and manner, and weigh his words with anxiety, and try to
forget that there was a secret between them.
One ground of Mr Hope's confidence was Hester's candour. She had truly
told her sister, she felt it was no time for pride when he offered
himself to her. Her pride was strong; but there was something in her as
much stronger in force than her pride as it was higher in its nature;
and she had owned her love with a frankness which had commanded his
esteem as much as it engaged his generosity. She had made a no less
open avowal of her faults to him. She had acknowledged the
imperfections of her temper (the sorest of her troubles) both at the
outset of their engagement, and often since. At first, the confession
was made in an undoubting confidence that she should be reasonable, and
amiable, and serene henceforth for ever, while she had him by her side.
Subsequent experience had moderated this confidence into a hope that, by
his example, and under his guidance, she should be enabled to surmount
her failings. He shared this hope with her; pledged himself to her and
to himself to forbear as he would be forborne; to aid her, and to honour
her efforts; and he frequently declared, for his own satisfaction and
hers, that all must be safe between them while such generous candour was
the foundation of their intercourse,--a generosity and candour in whose
noble presence superficial failings of temper were as nothing. He
admitted that her temper was not perfect; and he must ever remember his
own foreknowledge of this: but he must also bear in mind whence this
foreknowledge was derived, and pay everlasting honour to the greatness
of soul to which he owed it.
An early day in December was fixed for the marriage, and no cause of
delay occurred. There happened to be no patients so dangerously ill as
to prevent Mr Hope's absence for his brief wedding trip; the
work-people were as nearly punctual as could be expected, and the house
was all but ready. The wedding was really to take place, therefore,
though Mrs Rowland gave out that in her opinion the engagement had been
a surprisingly short one; that she hoped the young people knew what they
were about, while all their friends were in such a hurry; that it was a
wretched time of year for a wedding; and that, in her opinion, it would
have been much pleasanter to wait for fine spring weather.
As it happened, the weather was finer than it had been almost any day of
the preceding spring. The day before the wedding was sunny and mild as
an October morning, and the fires seemed to be blazing more for show
than use. When Mr Hope dropped in at the Greys', at two o'clock, he
found the family dining. It was a fancy of Mrs Grey's to dine early on
what she considered busy days. An early dinner was, with her, a
specific for the despatch of business. On this day, the arrangement was
rather absurd; for the great evil of the time was, that everything was
done, except what could not be transacted till the evening; and the
hours were actually hanging heavy on the hands of some members of the
family. Morris had packed Hester's clothes for her little journey, and
put out of sight all the mourning of both sisters, except what they
actually had on. Sophia's dress for the next morning was laid out, in
readiness to be put on, and the preparations for the breakfast were as
complete as they could be twenty hours beforehand. It only remained to
take a final view of the house in the evening (when the children's
presents were to be discovered), and to cut the wedding-cake. In the
interval, there was nothing to be done. Conversation flagged; every one
was dull; and it was a relief to the rest when Mr Hope proposed to
Hester to take a walk.
Mrs Rowland would have laughed at the idea of a walk on a December
afternoon, if she had happened to know of the circumstance; but others
than lovers might have considered it pleasant. The sun was still an
hour from its setting; and high in the pale heaven was the large moon,
ready to shine upon the fields and woods, and shed a milder day. No
frost had yet bound up the earth; it had only stripped the trees with a
touch as gentle as that of the fruit-gatherer. No wintry gusts had yet
swept through the woods; and all there was this day as still as in the
autumn noon, when the nut is heard to drop upon the fallen leaves, and
the light squirrel is startled at the rustle along its own path. As a
matter of course, the lovers took their way to the Spring in the Vernon
woods, the spot which had witnessed more of their confidence than any
other. In the alcove above it they had taken shelter from the summer
storm and the autumn shower; they had sat on its brink for many an hour,
when the pure depths of its rocky basin seemed like coolness itself in
the midst of heat, and when falling leaves fluttered down the wind, and
dimpled the surface of the water. They now paused once more under
shelter of the rock which overhung one side of the basin, and listened
to the trickle of the spring. If "aside the devil turned for envy" in
the presence of the pair in Paradise, it might be thought that he would
take flight from this scene also; from the view of this resting of the
lovers on their marriage eve, when the last sun of their separate lives
was sinking, and the separate business of their existence was finished,
and their paths had met before the gate of their paradise, and they were
only waiting for the portal to open to them. But there was that on
Hester's brow which would have made the devil look closer. She was
discomposed, and her replies to what was said were brief, and not much
to the purpose. After a few moments' silence, Mr Hope said gaily--
"There is something on our minds, Hester. Come, what is it?"
"Do not say `our minds.' You know you never have anything on yours. I
believe it is against your nature; and I know it is against your
principles. Do not say `our minds.'"
"I say it because it is true. I never see you look grave but my heart
is as heavy--. But never mind that. What is the matter, love?"
"Nothing," sighed Hester. "Nothing that any one can help--. People may
say what they will, Edward: but there can be no escape from living alone
in this world, after all."
"What _do_ you mean?"
"I mean what no one, not even you, can gainsay. I mean that `the heart
knoweth its own bitterness;' that we have disappointments, and
anxieties, and remorse, and many, many kinds of trouble that we can
never tell to any human being--that none have any concern with--that we
should never dare to tell. We must be alone in the world, after all."
"Where is your faith, while you feel so?" asked Edward, smiling. "Do
you really think that confidence proceeds only while people believe each
other perfect,--while they have not anxieties, and disappointments, and
remorse? Do you not feel that our faults, or rather our failures, bind
us together?"
"Our faults bind us together!" exclaimed Hester. "Oh how happy I should
be, if I could think that!"
"We cannot but think it. We shall find it so, love, every day. When
our faith fails, when we are discouraged, instead of fighting the battle
with our faithlessness alone, we shall come to one another for courage,
for stimulus, for help to see the bright, the true side of everything."
"That supposes that we can do so," said Hester, sadly. "But I cannot.
I have all my life intended to repose entire confidence, and I have
never done it yet."
"Yes: you have in me. You cannot help it. You think that you cannot,
only because you mean more by reposing confidence than others do. Your
spirit is too noble, too ingenuous, too humble for concealment. You
cannot help yourself, Hester: you have fully confided in me, and you
will go on to do so."
Hester shook her head mournfully. "I have done it hitherto with you,
and with you only," said she: "and the mason has been--you know the
reason--the same which made me own all to you, that first evening in the
shrubbery. Ah! I see you think that this is a lasting security; that,
as you will never change, I never shall: but you do not understand me
wholly yet. There is something that you do not know,--that I cannot
make you believe: but you will find it true, when it is too late. No
good influence is permanent with me; many, all have been tried; and the
evil that is in me gets the better of them all at last."
She snatched her hand from her lover's, and covered her face to hide her
tears.
"I shall not contradict you, Hester," said he, tenderly, "because you
will only abase yourself the more in your own eyes. But tell me again--
where is your faith, while you let spectres from the past glide over
into the future, to terrify you? I say `you' and not `us,' because I am
not terrified. I fear nothing. I trust you, and I trust Him who
brought us together, and moved you to lay open your honest heart to me."
"My sick heart, Edward. It is sick with fear. I thought I had got over
it. I thought you had cured it; and that now, on this day, of all days,
I should have been full of your spirit--of the spirit which made me so
happy a few weeks ago, that I was sure I should never fall back again.
But I am disappointed in myself, Edward--wholly disappointed in myself.
I have often been so before, but this time it is fatal. I shall never
make you happy, Edward."
"Neither God nor man requires it of you, Hester. Dismiss it--."
"Oh, hear me!" cried Hester, in great agitation. "I vowed to devote
myself to my father's happiness, when my mother died; I promised to
place the most absolute confidence in him. I failed. I fancied
miserable things. I fancied he loved Margaret better; and that I was
not necessary to him; and I was too proud, too selfish, to tell him so:
and when he was dying, and commended Margaret and me to each other--Oh,
so solemnly!--I am sure it was in compassion to me--and I shrank from
it, even at that moment. When we came here, and Margaret and I felt
ourselves alone among strangers, we promised the same confidence I vowed
to my father. The next thing was--perhaps you saw it--I grew jealous of
Margaret's having another friend, though Maria was as ready to be my
friend as hers, if I had only been worthy of it. Up to this hour--at
this very moment, I believe I am jealous of Maria--and with Margaret
before my eyes--Margaret, who loves me as her own soul, and yet has
never felt one moment's jealousy of you, I am certain, if her heart was
known."
"We will rejoice, then, in Margaret's peace of mind, the reward of her
faith."
"Oh, so I do! I bless God that she is rewarded, better than by me. But
you see how it is. You see how I poison every one's life. I never made
anybody happy! I never shall make anyone happy!"
"Let us put the thought of making happiness out of our minds
altogether," said Hope. "I am persuaded that half the misery in the
world comes of straining after happiness."
"After our own," said Hester. "I could give up my own. But yours! I
cannot put yours out of my thoughts."
"Yes, you can; and you will when you give your faith fair play. Why
cannot you trust God with my happiness as well as your own? And why
cannot you trust me to do without happiness, if it be necessary, as well
as yourself?"
"I know," said Hester, "that you are as willing to forego all for me as
I am for you; but I cannot, I dare not, consent to the risk. Oh,
Edward! if ever you wished to give me ease, do what I ask now! Give me
up! I shall make you wretched. Give me up, Edward!"
Hope's spirit was for one instant wrapped in storm. He recoiled from
the future, and at the moment of recoil came this offer of release. One
moment's thought of freedom, one moment's thought of Margaret convulsed
his soul; but before he could speak the tempest had passed away.
Hester's face, frightfully agitated, was upraised: his countenance
seemed heavenly to her when he smiled upon her, and replied--
"I will not. You are mine; and, as I said before, all our failures, all
our heart-sickness, must bind us the more to each other."
"Then you must sustain me--you must cure me--you must do what no one has
ever yet been able to do. But above all, Edward, you must never, happen
what may, cast me off."
"That is, as you say, what no one has ever been able to do," said he,
smiling. "Your father's tenderness was greatest at the last; and
Margaret loves you, you know, as her own soul. Let us avoid promises,
but let us rest upon these truths. And now," continued he, as he drew
nearer to her, and made his shoulder a resting-place for her throbbing
head, "I have heard your thoughts for the future. Will you hear mine?"
Hester made an effort to still her weeping.
"I said just now, that I believe half the misery in our lives is owing
to straining after happiness; and I think, too, that much of our sin is
owing to our disturbing ourselves too much about our duty. Instead of
yielding a glad obedience from hour to hour, it is the weakness of many
of us to stretch far forward into the future, which is beyond our
present reach, and torment ourselves with apprehensions of sin, which we
should be ashamed of if they related to pain and danger."
"Oh, if you could prove to me that such is my weakness!" cried Hester.
"I believe that it is yours, and I know that it is my own, my Hester.
We must watch over one another. Tell me, is it not faithless to let our
hearts be troubled about _any_ possible evil which we cannot, at the
moment of the trouble, prevent? And are we not sacrificing, what is, at
the time, of the most importance--our repose of mind, the holiness, the
religion of the hour?"
"I know I have defiled the holiness of this hour," said Hester, humbly.
"But as my thoughts were troubled, was it not better to speak them? I
could not but speak them."
"You cannot but do and speak what is most honourable, and true, and
generous, Hester; and that is the very reason why I would fain have you
trust, for the future as well as the present, to the impulse of the
hour. Surely, love, the probation of the hour is enough for the
strength of every one of us."
"Far, far too much for me."
"At times, too much for all. Well, then, what have we to do? To rest
the care of each other's happiness upon Him whose care it is: to be
ready to do without it, as we would hold ourselves ready to do without
this, or that, or the other comfort, or supposed means of happiness.
Depend upon it, this happiness is too subtle and too divine a thing for
our management. We have nothing to do with it but to enjoy it when it
comes. Men say of it--`Lo! it is here!'--`Lo! there!'--but never has
man laid hold of it with a voluntary grasp."
"But we can banish it," said Hester.
"Alas! yes: and what else do we do at the very moment when we afflict
ourselves about the future? Surely our business is to keep our hearts
open for it--holy and at peace, from moment to moment, from day to day."
"And yet, is it not our privilege--said at least to be so--to look
before and after? I am not sure, however, that I always think this a
privilege. I long sometimes to be any bird of the air, that I might
live for the present moment alone."
"Let us be so far birds of the air--free as they, neither toiling nor
spinning out anxious thoughts for the future: but why, with all this,
should we not use our human privilege of looking before and after, to
enrich and sanctify the present? Should we enjoy the wheat-fields in
June as we do if we knew nothing of seed-time, and had never heard of
harvest? And how should you and I feel at this moment, sitting here, if
we had no recollection of walks in shrubberies, and no prospect of a
home, and a lifetime to spend in it, to make this moment sacred? Look
at those red-breasts: shall we change lots with them?"
"No, no: let us look forward; but how? We cannot persuade ourselves
that we are better than we are, for the sake of making the future
bright."
"True: and therefore it must be God's future, and not our own, that we
must look forward to."
"That is for confessors and martyrs," said Hester. "They can look
peacefully before and after, when there is a bright life and a world of
hopes lying behind; and nothing around and before them but ignominy and
poverty, or prison, or torture, or death. They can do this: but not
such as I. God's future is enough for them--the triumph of truth and
holiness; but--."
"And I believe it would be enough for you in their situation, Hester. I
believe you could be a martyr for opinion. Why cannot you and I brave
the suffering of our own faults as we would meet sickness or bereavement
from Heaven, and torture and death from men?"
"Is this the prospect in view of which you marry me?"
"It is the prospect in view of which all of us are ever living, since we
are all faulty, and must all suffer. But marriage justifies a holier
and happier anticipation. The faults of human beings are temporary
features of their prospect: their virtues are the firm ground under
their feet, and the bright arch over their heads. Is it not so?"
"If so, how selfish, how ungrateful have I been in making myself and you
so miserable! But I do so fear myself!"
"Let us fear nothing, but give all our care to the day and the hour. I
am confident that this is the true obedience, and the true wisdom. If
the temper of the hour is right, nothing is wrong."
"And I am sure, if the temper of the hour is wrong, nothing is right.
If one could always remember this--."
"If we could always remember this, we should perhaps find ourselves a
little above the angels, instead of being, like the serene, the Fenelons
of our race, a little below them. We shall not always remember it,
love; but we must remind each other as faithfully as may be."
"You must bring me here, when I forget," said Hester. "This spring will
always murmur the truth to me--`If the temper of the hour is right
nothing is wrong.' How wrong has my temper been within this hour!"
"Let it pass, my Hester. We are all faithless at times, and without the
excuse of meek and anxious love. Is it possible that the moon casts
that shadow?"
"The dark, dark hour is gone," said Hester, smiling as she looked up,
and the moon shone on her face. "Nothing is wrong. Who would have
believed, an hour ago, that I should now say so?"
"When you would have given me up," said Hope, smiling. "Oh, let us
forget it all! Let us go somewhere else. Who will say this is winter?
Is it October, or `the first mild day of March?' It might be either."
"There is not a breath to chill us; and these leaves--what a soft autumn
carpet they make! They have no wintry crispness yet."
There was one inexhaustible subject to which they now recurred--Mr
Hope's family. He told over again, what Hester was never weary of
hearing, how his sisters would cherish her, whenever circumstances
should allow them to meet--how Emily and she would suit best, but how
Anne would look up to her. As for Frank--. But this representation of
what Frank would say, and think, and do, was somewhat checked and
impaired by the recollection that Frank was just about this time
receiving the letter, in which Margaret's superiority to Hester was
pretty plainly set forth. The answer to that letter would arrive, some
time or other, and the anticipated awkwardness of that circumstance
caused some unpleasant feelings at this moment, as it had often done
before, during the last few weeks. Nothing could be easier than to set
the matter right with Frank, as was already done with Emily and Anne;
the first letter might occasion some difficulty. Frank was passed over
lightly, and the foreground of the picture of family welcome was
occupied by Emily and Anne.
It was almost an hour from their leaving the Spring before the lovers
reached home. They were neither cold nor tired; they were neither merry
nor sad. The traces of tears were on Hester's face; but even Margaret
was satisfied when she saw her leaning on Edward's arm, receiving the
presents of the children where alone the children would present them--in
the new house. There was no fancy about the arrangements, no ceremony
about the cake and the ring, to which Hester did not submit with perfect
grace. Notwithstanding the traces of her tears, she had never looked so
beautiful.
The same opinion was repeated the next morning by all the many who saw
her in church, or who caught a glimpse of her, in her way to and from
it. No wedding was ever kept a secret in Deerbrook; and Mr Hope's was
the one in which concealment was least of all possible. The church was
half full, and the path to the church-door was lined with gazers. Those
who were obliged to remain at home looked abroad from their doors; so
that all were gratified more or less. Every one on Mr Grey's premises
had a holiday--including Miss Young, though Mrs Rowland did not see why
her children should lose a day's instruction, because a distant cousin
of Mr Grey's was married. The marriage was made far too much a fuss of
for her taste; and she vowed that whenever she parted with her own
Matilda, there should be a much greater refinement in the mode. Every
one else appeared satisfied. The sun shone; the bells rang; and the
servants drank the health of the bride and bridegroom. Margaret
succeeded in swallowing her tears, and was, in her inmost soul, thankful
for Hester and herself. The letters to Mr Hope's sisters and brother,
left open for the signatures of Edward and Hester Hope, were closed and
despatched; and the news was communicated to two or three of the
Ibbotsons' nearest friends at Birmingham. Mr and Mrs Grey agreed, at
the end of the day, that a wedding was, to be sure, a most fatiguing
affair for quiet people like themselves; but that nothing could have
gone off better.