"Good-bye, Barrie. Some day perhaps you'll understand and forgive me. I always had a presentiment that I shouldn't be able to bring it off at the last; that Somerled would cut in and snatch you away from me."
Ian suggested taking me to Carlisle, only eight miles away, to stay with Grandma until we could have a more conventional wedding. But when I said, "Aren't we really and truly married, then?" in a frightened voice, he said, "Of course we are, my darling child—married as fast as if by book and bell. Nothing can part us. I shall never let you go out of my sight for five minutes after this—unless you want to go."
"But I don't," I said. And a sudden thought came to me. I told him I wished he would take me to Sweetheart Abbey. If it had been appropriate to spend the first night of the heather moon there, as Mrs. James had said, it would be still more appropriate to spend the first night of the honeymoon.
We bade the old man of the house good-bye and he shook hands with us both. Ian gave him something which made him exclaim, "I thank you kindly, indeed, sir! And I must say, if you'll excuse the liberty, I never wanted the other gentleman to get her, sir. I felt in my bones there was something wrong, so I kept on asking questions to delay the thing. If I hadn't done that, it would all have been fixed up before you came along."
"If it had been, I should have taken her away from him, anyhow," said Ian, "because she was my wife, and she couldn't have been his."
"Not exactly your wife, sir," the old man tried to explain, taking him literally. "But——"
"If not in law she was in heart, and she was meant for me from the beginning of time," said Ian.
Then we went out to the dear Gray Dragon, which was white with dust, and so was dear Vedder.
"It's all right," Ian said to the stolid-looking fellow; and Vedder answered, "Hurrah to heaven, sir!" which was a very queer expression, but I liked it, and loved him for it. Basil used to say that chauffeurs are a strange new race of men, but I think they are splendid. I hoped that Ian would double Vedder's wages, and afterward he did.
We drove fast to Sweetheart Abbey, with the heather moon in the east, a sweet, pale, thin-cheeked moon, past her prime of youth, but more beautiful and kind than ever. As we flew along the empty road, the Gray Dragon purring with joy in our joy, rabbits ran ahead of us, like tiny messengers impatient to tell the good news of what had happened. Our big, white headlight turned them into bouncing, gray balls, and there were dozens of them, tearing along just in front of us sometimes, but we would not have killed or hurt one for its weight in gold.