“Zana! Zana!”
I flung myself on her bosom. She smothered me with her kisses, while blessed old Turner stood pleading for one look at my face, that he might be sure it was his child.
We sat up all night. Not once alone, but twenty times, I was forced to repeat the romance I had been living. Over and over again they told me how heartbroken they were when old Jupiter came back with his empty saddle, and bridle trailing in the dust. For weeks old Turner had searched for me. For months he had done nothing but mourn. Jupiter had pined like the rest. My absence had flung everything into shadow.
But I was home again—home again—not for a time, but for all the days of my life—the mistress of Greenhurst and the betrothed wife of Irving. Turner kept repeating this over and over, as he walked up and down the room. He could not realize it. In truth, I think he did not quite admit all the facts to his belief, till he saw me cantering off on Jupiter’s back the next morning. Dear old Ju, what a glorious ride we had over the uplands that day!
CHAPTER LVI.
THE OLD TOWER CHAMBER.
It was my bridal morning. I sat within my own pretty chamber, for from the cottage that had been my first shelter, not from the mansion which was only my inheritance, I resolved that Irving should take his bride. For the first time in my life I was clad in pure white. No summer cloud was ever more soft and vapory than the flow of my robe. The bridal veil, crowned by a garland of pale blush roses, fell like a web of exquisite frost-work around me. Pearls gleamed like hail-stones amid the snow of this dress, and a single white rose-bud, hidden in moss, gathered its cloudiness over my bosom.
Cora and my blessed old bonne had done this fairy work, and I was not to see myself till the toilet was complete. At last they led me up to the mirror. As I looked in, a faint pang seized me, for the whiteness of my dress struck inward, and drifts of snow seemed crowding against my heart. A vague dread of some unseen presence brought the old shudder upon me. I looked around in chill apprehension for my mother’s face. As I turned, a gush of sunshine come through the pink and white window-curtains, flooding me from head to foot with its rosy glow. I felt the brightness and the warmth. For one instant it seemed to me that my mother’s soft eyes looked upon me through the floating haze. My heart swelled again. A smile sprang to my lips. The coldness had forever departed from my bosom. The chill of my mother’s death was quenched in the glory of my new life.
The sound of bells sweeping up through the beautiful morning came to my chamber, filling my soul with a sweet tranquillity. On this day began the calm of my life. I went forth garlanded with bridal roses, on which the dew still rested, and with old Turner by my side rode to the church along the road where the wedding of my father and the funeral of his bride had passed by me, a poor gipsy beggar, lying sick and dizzy, with returning life in the open field. I thought of all this with gentle sadness, but it could not reach the heaven in my heart. The iron thread had melted away from the gold of my destiny. The altar was graced with roses that made the air fragrant with their breath, as we knelt before it. Mr. Clark, that day appointed rector of Marston Court, clasped our hands together before it, and sent us forth into the beautiful eternity of our love.
Marston and Cora, the new lord and lady of Marston Court, stood by, regarding us with gentle affection, while lady Catherine, yielding to her own interests, but half reconciled at heart, looked down in sovereign pride on Mr. Turner, from whose hands her high-born son was willing to receive his bride, for who else had the right to give me away?
As we turned from the altar, I saw, at the lower end of the church, the dark face of Chaleco. He was looking at me with a wild, mournful expression, that seemed more sombre from the shadows in which he stood. He answered my smile, which invited him to approach, with a moody wave of the head; but as we went down the aisle, he came toward us.