"That knocks down all my defences," she mused, and moved suddenly and found her handkerchief and buried her face in it. "I'm a fool to cry,"

she reflected. "It doesn't alter anything really... But I wish she hadn't sent that message."

Thus ended Prudence's fight for freedom. She gave in weakly, without further struggle; her resolves borne down by the relentless opposition of the family, by Mr Morgan's quite courteous persistence, and by his mother's unexpected concession. She no longer had any substantial reason to urge against the marriage. The reason which she had put forward repeatedly, that she did not love the man she was being forced to marry, was treated as frivolous and generally disregarded. There appeared no way of escape.

Marriage, which once had seemed to her to offer freedom from the dull restrictions of her home life, was nothing more than a shuffling of the same pack of cards. She would change her place in the game, that was all; leave one control for another. Perhaps that was life--woman's life, anyway. But she had dreamed once of fine things, big things, in a world that was fair and lovely and tolerant--the land of promise of every young imaginative mind.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

Having yielded on the most important point. Prudence conceded every other. She no longer seemed to possess any will, or, if the will were there, she had no heart to express her wishes. The family arranged everything without consulting her; and the marriage, which was hurried forward to fit in as nearly as possible with the date previously fixed upon, was the biggest and most important function of its kind that Wortheton had ever seen.

The young bride alone showed no interest in the proceedings, and wore her white satin and orange wreath with a look of weary protest in her pretty eyes, and an air of shrinking timidity which Mr Morgan considered very beautiful.

Bobby's disgust at the whole affair was openly manifest. It would have been more seemly, he told her with scorn, had she married the curate.

"There's no accounting for tastes," he said, with an odd lack of sympathy in his manner. "Morgan is a refined edition of Uncle William.

When you are indulging in your hot water kidney cures and boiled mutton and respectability, don't forget that you asked for these blessings."

"Oh, Bobby!" she protested.

"Well, I told you not to give in. You should have taken a firm stand."

"When you have lived at home a little while you will discover how simple that advice is to follow," she said, and left him to digest this remark at his leisure. She felt too flattened to argue with him.

But on the day of the actual ceremony Bobby proved helpful and encouraging. He hovered about her watchfully, and was always at hand to fend off the bores, as he expressed it.

"It might be worse, old girl," he said. "When you are fed up with things, send for me, and we'll manage some sort of a stunt together."

There was no pretence between him and Prudence that the latter's marriage was a subject for rejoicing: they were too intimately acquainted with each other's thoughts to attempt a pose.

"Lord! won't it be dull," he said, "without you."

The Rev Ernest a.s.sisted in marrying his sister-in-law; and Matilda in a dove-coloured dress, a little regretful, and still puzzled by the turn of events, followed the service tearfully, and compared Mr Morgan's matured thick-set figure with Steele's well-set-up, muscular youthfulness, to the former's disadvantage, and tried to solace her misgivings with the reflection that doubtless everything was ordered for the best in this admirably regulated universe.

Then the ring was placed on Prudence's finger; and the married couple repaired to the vestry, where Prudence signed the register which witnessed to the sacrifice of her girlhood and all her dreams of romance and freedom and the great flight into the unknown, which was to have revealed such wonderful possibilities of a golden life, complete and satisfying, and bright with gratified desires. The shackles were riveted and her wings clipped for all time.

Marriage is one of two things, a realisation of life, or a compromise.

Prudence had effected a compromise, with her eyes opened wide to what she had lost.

"That's finished," Edward Morgan said in satisfied tones, and kissed his wife heartily.

Every one showed an eagerness to kiss the bride. Even William raised her veil and laid a benedictory kiss upon her brow; but it was Bobby alone who felt her lips respond to his in warm affection; to the rest she remained a composed, unsmiling young woman, far too composed for a bride, Matilda thought. She never shed a tear. Matilda had shed several--emotional drops of pure happiness. She recalled her sentimental mood of tremulous joy with agreeable satisfaction. Love must express itself in such tender ways; it is never coldly and gravely self-contained, as in Prudence's case.

"I hope you will be very happy, dear," Matilda said mournfully. "It is a blessed thing to be married."

At which the bride's stony features relaxed into a quiet smile; she had often heard Ernest make use of the same expression, though never in relation to his connubial bliss.

Old Mrs Morgan, and Mr and Mrs Henry attended the wedding; and Bobby and Mrs Henry exerted themselves to make the affair go off brightly.

Mrs Henry was a sport, Bobby opined. He had an idea that under her auspices Prudence might have quite a good time, the nightly K.B. and the mother-in-law notwithstanding.

Mrs Henry confessed to him her surprise at Prudence's sudden capitulation.

"I never supposed she would give in," she said.

"It wasn't her fault entirely," Bobby returned. "The family made it so beastly uncomfortable for her. Now you see us in bulk you ought to be equal to grasping the situation. You see us at our amiable best; we aren't often so agreeable. But even at our best we are a trifle heavy."

"You are the lightest heavyweight I have ever encountered," she replied, laughing.

"Oh! I don't count. I'm a sort of changeling." He brought his face suddenly close to hers. "I say," he said confidentially, "look after Prue a bit, and help her to a spree occasionally. It's been dull enough for her at home. She ought to have a fling now and again."

Mrs Henry looked into his earnest eyes reflectively for a moment, and smiled.

"That will be all right," she said. "I've been a rebel always. We'll contrive between us to make things hum. You shall come along some day and see."

"I can't understand a man wishing to marry a girl who has shown that she isn't keen," he remarked.

Mrs Henry betrayed amus.e.m.e.nt.

"The average man's vanity prevents him from realising her lack of eagerness," she returned cynically.

"He attributes her reluctance to shyness or ignorance or any other incomprehensible feminine quality, seldom to non-appreciation of himself. It is just as well, perhaps; it makes things pleasanter. But don't you think at this stage it would be advisable to admit the keenness?"

"Well, perhaps," he allowed, and smiled in response to the laugh in her eyes. "Life is all a game of make-believe, after all. Look round, and behold! Every one affecting affability, and trying to appear as though this were a joyful occasion. There is as much real joy in a funeral.

Uncle William is genuinely pleased anyhow. He has always feared that Prue would get Benjamin's share of the spoil. There is more than a touch of the miser in the Graynor blood."

William meanwhile was conversing amiably with the bride, who, wearied with congratulations, had drawn a little apart from the press of guests, and stood in the opening of the French window where the sunlight fell on the sheen of white satin and brightened the gold of her hair. From where she stood she could survey the wallflowers growing in the borders near the path. The sight of them brought back vividly the memory of the night when they had suffered sadly from the tread of despoiling feet.

She answered William absently.

"I am proud of you," he said unexpectedly, and placed a heavy hand upon her arm. "The Graynor honour is safe in your keeping."

She looked at him curiously. William was fond of talking of the Graynor honour as though it were a quality peculiarly and finely personal. She wondered what he had ever done to make it so manifestly his. He spoke as a man might speak, but never does, who spends his life in defence of this particular virtue.

"I've renounced the Graynor," she replied with a little twist of her lips. "I'm not keeping anything appertaining to the name. As for honour, we guard it best, perhaps, when we are least concerned about it--it's a natural instinct, not an hereditary quality."

"It has always been an attribute of our family," he observed pompously.

"Like the chimneys," she remarked--"which spoil the landscape for other people."

She felt irritated, irritated with his sententiousness, his inflated pride. She wished he would not thrust his unwanted company upon her.

His condescending air of being kind and brotherly exasperated her. He had rushed her into this marriage, he and Agatha; and she was resentful and bitter on this account. It was a matter of immense regret to her at that moment that she had yielded to the force of circ.u.mstances and become the reluctant bride of a man who was altogether too good to be treated in this fashion. Their married life could never be entirely happy: he would demand of her what she could never give.

The consciousness of his claim upon her galled already. When she saw him coming towards her, where she stood with William in the aperture of the window, advancing heavily with his smiling gaze upon her white-clad figure, she experienced a difficulty in meeting his eyes. Something akin to fear gripped her heart and held her silent, white-lipped and unsmiling, as he approached. She felt a wild desire to escape--out through the open window, beyond the walls into the road--to run away into the wide open country and hide.

He little guessed at the storm that shook that quiet figure which remained so still and unresponsive when he halted beside it, with some jesting remark about her having slipped away from him. She gathered from his words that she had done an unprecedented thing in deserting his side. That was her place--at his side--always.

He conducted her to the dining-room, where a huge wedding cake adorned the centre of the long table, a mountain of ornamental white sugar and silver decorations, which it was required she should cut, while her husband stood by, glad and proud, wishful to be helpful, enjoying these absurd customs, and listening to and responding to the toasts with heartfelt appreciation.

Would all this insincere merrymaking never end?