Nora Field had no fortune of her own, nor was her uncle in a position to give her any. He was not a poor man; but like many men who are not poor, he had hardly a pound of his own in the shape of ready money.
To Nora and to her cousins, and to certain other first cousins of the same family, had been left, some eighteen months since, by a grand-aunt, a hundred pounds a-piece, and with this hundred pounds Nora was providing for herself her wedding trousseau.
A hundred pounds do not go far in such provision, as some young married women who may read this will perhaps acknowledge; but Mr. Frederic F. Frew had been told all about it, and he was contented. Miss Field was fond of nice clothes, and had been tempted more than once to wish that her great-aunt had left them all two hundred pounds a-piece instead of one.
“If I were to cast in my wedding veil?” said Nora.
“That will be your husband’s property,” said her aunt.
“Ah, but before I’m married.”
“Then why have it at all?”
“It is ordered, you know.”
“Couldn’t you bedizen yourself with one made of false lace” said her uncle. “Frew would never find it out, and that would be a most satisfactory spoiling of the Amalekite.”
“He isn’t an Amalekite, uncle Robert. Or if he is, I’m another.”