And this was the last event of that eventful day. At midnight, lawyers and lover went away, and the tired girls to bed, and Elizabeth and Patty spent their last night together in each other's arms.
[CHAPTER XLIV.]
THE WEDDING DAY.
After all, Elizabeth's wedding ceremonies, though shorn of much customary state, were not so wildly unconventional as to shock the feelings of society. Save in the matter of that excessive haste—which Mr. Yelverton took pains to show was not haste at all, seeing that, on the one hand, his time was limited, and that, on the other, there was absolutely nothing to wait for—all things were done decently and in order; and Mrs. Duff-Scott even went so far as to confess, when the bride and bridegroom had departed, that the fashion of their nuptials was "good art;" and that these were not the days to follow stereotyped customs blindfold. There was no unnecessary secrecy about it. Overnight, just, and only just, before she went to bed, the mistress of the house had explained the main facts of the case to her head servants, who, she knew, would not be able to repeat the story until too late for the publication of it to cause any inconvenience. She told them how the three Miss Kings—who had never been Miss Kings after all—had come in for large fortunes, under a will that had been long mislaid and accidentally recovered; and how Miss Elizabeth, who had been engaged for some considerable time (O, mendacious matron!), was to be married to her cousin, Mr. Yelverton, in the morning—very quietly, because both of them had a dislike to publicity and fuss. And in the morning the little Cockney lady's-maid, bringing them their tea, brought a first instalment of congratulations to the bride and her sisters, who had to hold a levée in the servants' hall as soon as they went downstairs. The household, if not boiling over with the excitement inseparable from a marriage à la mode, was in a pleasant simmer of decorous enjoyment; and the arrangements for the domestic celebration of the event lacked nothing in either completeness or taste. The gardener brought his choicest flowers for the table and for the bride's bouquet, which was kept in water until her return from church; and the cook surpassed himself in his efforts to provide a wedding breakfast that should be both faultless and unique. The men servants wore bits of strong-scented orange blossom in their button-holes, and the women white ribbons in their caps. They did what they could, in short, to honour the occasion and the young lady who had won their affection before she came into her inheritance of wealth, and the result to themselves and the family was quite satisfactory.
There was a great deal of cold weather in the last month of 1880, summer time though it was, and this special morning was very cold. Elizabeth had not the face to come down to the early breakfast and a blazing fire in the gown she had worn the day before, and Mrs. Duff-Scott would not hear of her going to church in it. "Do you suppose he is quite an idiot?" she indignantly demanded (forgetting the absolute indifference to weather shown in the conventional bridal costume), when the bride gave an excuse for her own unreasonableness. "Do you suppose he wants you to catch your death of cold on your wedding day?"
"What does it matter?" said Patty. "He won't care what you have on. Put it in the portmanteau and wear it at dinner every night, if he likes to see you in it. This morning you had better make yourself warm. He never expected the day to turn out so cold as this."
And while they were talking of it Mr. Yelverton himself appeared, contrary to etiquette and his own arrangements. "Good morning," he said, shaking hands impartially all round. "I just came in to tell you that it is exceedingly cold, and that Elizabeth had better put a warm dress on. One would think it was an English December day by the feel of the wind."
She got up from the breakfast-table and went out of the room, hurried away by Mrs. Duff-Scott; but in a minute she came back again.
"Did you come for anything in particular?" she asked, anxiously.