"Oh, but—but you said you would not take his place—Mr. Ponsonby's. Can you let everyone think you capable of such an act of meanness? And if you could not respect me as your wife, how can you expect others to? Can we appear to act in a way to deserve contempt without despising each other?"
"There will be a good deal that is unpleasant about it, no doubt; but everyone's life has some unpleasantness. It would be worse to let a dream, even a dream of honor, come between us and our future. You made a mistake and underestimated its consequences, but it would be foolish to lose the substance of happiness because we have lost the shadow. We will live it down together and be glad it is no worse."
"But I have been so wrong, so very wrong—I have too many faults ever to make anyone happy."
"Of course you have faults, but I know the worst of them and can put up with them. I have plenty of my own which you may be finding out by this time. I am very domineering—you will have to promise to obey me, and I shall keep you to it; and then I can, under provocation, be furiously jealous."
"You are not jealous of Jack Allston?" she whispered.
"Jealous of old Jack? Oh, no! I shall keep my jealousy for poor Mr. Ponsonby."
Society had been so often agitated by Lily Carey's affairs that it took with comparative coolness the tidings that she was to be married to Arend Van Voorst in six weeks. Miss Morgan said she supposed Lily was tired of "engagements," and wanted to be married this time. Her niece Emmeline shed tears over "poor Mr. Ponsonby," and refused to act as bridesmaid at his rival's nuptials; and in spite of her aunt's scoldings and Lily's entreaties, and all the temptations of the bridesmaids' pearl "lily" brooches and nosegays of Easter lilies, arranged a visit to her cousins in Philadelphia to avoid being present. Miss Thorne had no such scruples, and it is to her the world owes a lively account of the wedding; how it was fixed at so early a date lest "poor Mr. Ponsonby" should hurry over to forbid the banns, and how terribly nervous Lily seemed lest he might, in spite of the absolute impossibility, and though Ponsonby, true gentleman to the last, never troubled her then or after.
"Poor Mr. Van Voorst, I should say!" exclaimed Mrs. Jack Allston. "I am sure he is the one to be pitied. But do tell me all the presents that have come in, for Jack says that I must give them something handsome after such a present as he gave me when we were married."
Mrs. Van Voorst received the tidings of her son's approaching marriage rather doubtfully. "Yes—the Careys were a very nice family; she knew Mrs. Carey was an Arlington, and her mother a Berkeley, and his mother—but—Miss Carey was very handsome, she had heard—with the Berkeley style of beauty and the Arlington manner, but—but—she did not mind their being Unitarians, for many of the very best people were, in Boston, but—but—but—indeed, my dear Arend, I have heard a good deal about her that I do not altogether like. I hope it may not be true—about her keeping Jack Allston hanging on for years, as pis-aller to that young Englishman she was engaged to all the while—and finally throwing him over—and now she has thrown over this Mr. Ponsonby too!"
"Will you do just one thing for me, dear mother," asked her son; "will you forget all you have heard about Lily, and judge her by what you see?"