“I consent!” cried Jane. “It is to be, and I consent. How is it possible for me to do otherwise?” she ejaculated, looking up towards the ceiling. “Yes, Master Richard, I consent.”
Richard Ashbrook felt as if a load had been lifted off his heart. He clung to her, and covered her face with passionate kisses.
Thus ended his wooing. When his brother and sister returned from Stokeferry Farm he made them acquainted with all that had occurred, which did not at all surprise them.
Then the village gossips, as well as their more immediate neighbours, had prognosticated how it would end.
James Ashbrook purchased a farm adjoining Oakfield. He and his brother were partners, but Richard furnished the residence attached to the adjoining farm. To this he took his young wife after their union, which took place in less than six months after the proposal and acceptanoe of the same by Jane Ryan.
If Richard Ashbrook had been a devoted lover he was an equally devoted husband. He treated his young wife with uniform kindness, and indulged her in every thing.
In a twelvemonth she presented her husband with a daughter, which he declared was the image of herself.
After this the shadow which had fallen upon her, and which marriage had failed to dispel, became deeper and deeper still.
For her husband’s sake she endeavoured to assume an air of cheerfulness, and strove as best she could to make him believe she was happy. He did his best to make her so, but despite all this there were many in the neighbourhood who shook their heads, and said that Mrs. Richard Ashbrook was fading away. She believed so herself—had always been under that impression. What she told the farmer before her marriage was true in substance and in fact.
She was a broken-hearted creature, and not all the wealth in the world—not all the attentions of her devoted husband could remove the cankerworm which had crept into her heart.