"If this is what you wish--as from your silence I conclude it is--be a.s.sured, Agatha, that I shall consent. I will take no wife against her will. The kisses of her lips would sting me, if there were no love in her heart."

Agatha was still silent.

"Well then, it must be so," said he, in slow, measured speech. "I must go away out of this house, for I am no bridegroom. You may tell the women to put away this white finery till it is wanted--which may be--never!"

She looked up questioningly.

"I repeat--_never_. The currents of life, so many and so fierce, may sweep us asunder at any moment. I may become mercenary, and choose a richer wife even than yourself; or you may turn from me to some one more pleasing, more winning--my brother, perhaps"--

Agatha recoiled, while the angry blood flashed from brow to throat. Her lover saw it, and for the moment a strange intentness was in his gaze.

But immediately he smiled, as a man would at some horrible phantom of his own creating, and continued with a softened manner:

"Or, if our own wills hold secure, many things may happen, as Anne Valery forewarned us, to prevent our union. Even ere a month or two--for if you are ever mine it must be as soon as then--but even within that time one or other of us may have gone away where no loving, no regretting, can ever call us back any more."

Terrible was the imagined solitude of a world from which had pa.s.sed the only being who cherished her--the only being whom she thoroughly honoured. Agatha drew closer to Nathanael.

"Still, for all that," continued he, striving to keep even in his mind the balance of honour and generous tenderness against the arguments of selfish pa.s.sion, "if for any reason you wish to postpone this day for weeks, months, or years, I will take the chance. All shall be as you deem best for your own happiness. As for mine--I will try to be content."

He paused a little, but it was a pause which no woman could misunderstand. Then, turning back to her, he said in a low tone,

"When am I to go away, Agatha?"

Her brow dropped slowly against his arm, as, much agitated, yet not unhappy, she whispered the one word "_Never_."

For one moment Agatha felt against her own the loud convulsive throbs of the heart that loved her--an embrace which, in its fierce rapture, was like none that came before it, or after. When she learned to count and chronicle such tokens of love, as one begins to count each wave when the sand grows dry, this embrace remained to her as a truth, a reality, which no succeeding doubts could explain away or gainsay.

It lasted, as such moments can but last, a s.p.a.ce too brief to be reckoned, dying out of its own intensity. Agatha slid from her lover's arms, and swiftly pa.s.sing out at the door, met Emma coming in. The unlucky bridegroom was left to make his own explanation to Mrs.

Th.o.r.n.ycroft, and how he performed that feat remains a mystery to this day.

Solemnly, and much affected, the bride went up-stairs to put on her wedding-garments.

Anne Valery had just arrived. She sat alone in Miss Bowen's dressing-room, playing with the orange-wreath. Her face wore a thoughtful, sickly, sad look, but the moment she heard some one at the door this expression vanished.

"So, my dear, you have a rather unconscionable bridegroom, Mrs.

Th.o.r.n.ycroft tells me. He has been here already."

Suddenly all that had happened recurred to Agatha. She forgot her own agitation in the joy of being the first to bring good news.

"Ah, you little know why he came. Uncle Brian--there is a letter from Uncle Brian."

And in her warm-heartedness of delight she threw her arms round Miss Valery's neck. She was very much surprised that Anne did not speak a single word, and that the cheek against which her young glowing one was pressed felt as cold as marble.

"Are you not glad, Miss Valery?"

"Yes, very glad. Now will you go down-stairs and fetch me the letter?"

And, gently putting the young girl from her, Anne sat down! As Agatha left the room, she fancied she heard a faint sound--a sigh or gasp; but Miss Valery had not moved. She sat as at first--her hands clasped on her lap, the veil of her bonnet falling over her face. And coming back some minutes after, Agatha found her in precisely the same position.

"Thank you, dear." She held out her hand for the letter, and then retired with it to a far window. It took a good while to read. All the time that the young bride was being dressed by Emma and the maid, Miss Valery stood in that recess, her back turned towards them, apparently reading or pondering over that strange scrawl from the Far West.

At last Mrs. Th.o.r.n.ycroft gently hinted that there was hardly time for her to return home and dress for the wedding.

"Dress for the wedding," repeated Anne, absently. "Oh, yes; I remember, it was to be early. No fear! I will be quite ready."

She crossed the room, walking slowly, but at the door turned to look at the bride, on whose head Emma was already placing the orange-blossoms.

"Doesn't she look pretty?" appealed the gratified matron-ministrant.

"Yes; very pretty.--G.o.d bless her!" said Miss Valery, and kissed her on the forehead. Agatha quite started--the lips were so cold.

"Well!" cried Emma Th.o.r.n.ycroft, as the door closed, "I do wish, my dear, that little Missy had been grown up enough to be your bridesmaid instead of that very quiet ordinary-looking old maid. But, after all, the contrast will be the greater."

At nine o'clock the bride's half of the wedding-party were all safely a.s.sembled in Doctor Ianson's drawing-room, and everything promised to go off successfully--to which result Emma, now all in her glory, prided herself as having been the main contributor--and no doubt the kind, active, sensible little matron was right.--When, lo!--there came an unlucky _contretemps_.

Major Harper, who of course was to give away the bride, sent word that on account of sudden business he could not possibly be at the church before eleven. At that hour he promised faithfully to meet his brother there. The note which he sent over was a very hurried and disjointed scrawl. This was all that the vexed bridegroom knew of the matter.

So for two long hours Agatha sat in her wedding-dress, strangely quiet and silent--sometimes playing with the wreath of orange-blossoms which her lover had sent her, and which, being composed of natural flowers, according to a whim of Mr. Harper's, was already beginning to fade.

Still she refused to put it aside, though the prudent Emma warned her it would be quite withered before she reached the church; "as was sure to be the case when people were so ridiculous as to wear real flowers."

The good soul went about, half scolding, half crying; hoping nothing might happen, or consoling herself with looking alternately at her pretty peach-coloured dress, and her "James," who walked about, indulging in gay reminiscences of his own wedding, and looking the most comfortable specimen imaginable of a worthy middle-aged "family man."

Nevertheless, in spite of Mr. Th.o.r.n.ycroft's efforts to cheer up the dreariness of the group, it was a great relief to everybody when, at the earliest reasonable time, the bride's small party started, and were at length a.s.sembled under the dark arches of Bloomsbury Church--darker than usual today, for the morning had gloomed over, and become close, hot, and thundery.

Punctually at eleven, but not a minute before, which--Emma whispered--was certainly not quite courteous in a bridegroom, Mr. Harper came in. There was no one with him.

"My brother not here?" he said in anxiety.

Some one hinted that Major Harper was never very punctual.

"He ought to be, this day at least," observed Mr. Th.o.r.n.y-croft. "And I am confident I saw him not half-an-hour ago walking homeward round the other side of Bedford Square. Do not be alarmed about him, pray." This last remark was addressed to Agatha, who, overpowered by the closeness of the day, and by these repeated disasters, had begun to turn pale.

Nathanael watched her with a keen anxiety, which only agitated her the more. Every one seemed uneasy and rather dull;--a circ.u.mstance not very remarkable, since, in spite of the popular delusion on that subject, very few ever really look happy at a wedding. It makes clearer to each one the silent ghost sitting in every human heart, which may take any form--bliss long desired, lost, or unfulfilled--or, in the fulfilling changed to pain--or, at best, looked back upon with a memory half-pensive if only because it is the past.

For forty interminable minutes did the little party wait in the dreary church aisles, until the clock, and likewise the beadle, warned them it was near the canonical hour.

"What are we to do?" whispered the bridegroom, looking towards Anne Valery. She took his hand, and drawing it towards Agatha's which hung on her arm, said earnestly:

"Wait no longer--life's changes will not wait Marry her _now_--nothing should come between lovers that love one another."

Anne's manner, so faltering, so different from her usual self, irresistibly impressed the hearers. Silently the little group moved to the altar; the clergyman, weary of delay, hurried the service, and in a few minutes the young creatures who eight weeks before had scarcely heard each other's names, were made "not two, but one flesh."

It was all like a dream to Agatha Bowen; she never believed in its reality until, signing that name, "Agatha Bowen," in the register-book, she remembered she was so signing it for the last time. A moment after, Emma's husband, who had a.s.sumed the office of father to the bride, cordially shaking her hand, wished all happiness to _Mrs. Harper_.

Agatha started, shivered, and burst into tears. It was a natural thing, after so many hours of overstrained excitement; nor were her tears those of unhappiness, yet they seemed, every drop, to burn on her bridegroom's heart. To crown all, while these unlucky tears were still falling, some one at the vestry door cried out, "There's Major Harper."

It was indeed himself. He entered the church hurriedly--very pale--with beads of dew standing on his brow.

"Are they married? Am I too late--are they married?" cried he.