Wife in Name Only

by Charlotte M. Brame

So the grand old words of the marriage-service were pronounced--they were promised to each other for better for worse, for weal for woe--never to part until death parted them--to be each the other's world.

It was the very morning for a bride. Heaven and earth smiled their brightest, the sunshine was golden, the autumn flowers bloomed fair, the autumn foliage had assumed its rich hues of crimson and of burnished gold; there was a bright light over the sea and the hill-tops.

Only one little contretemps happened at the wedding. Madaline smiled at it. Lord Arleigh was too happy even to notice it, but Lady Peters grew pale at the occurrence; for, according to her old-fashioned ideas, it augured ill.

Just as Lord Arleigh was putting the ring on the finger of his fair young bride, it slipped and fell to the ground. The church was an old-fashioned one, and there were graves and vaults all down the aisle. Away rolled the little golden ring, and when Lord Arleigh stooped down he could not see it. He was for some minutes searching for it, and then he found it--it had rolled into the hollow of a large letter on one of the level grave-stones.

Involuntarily he kissed it as he lifted it from the ground; it was too cruel for anything belonging to that fair young bride to have been brought into contact with death. Lady Peters noted the little incident with a shudder, Madaline merely smiled. Then the ceremony was over--Lord Arleigh and Madaline were man and wife. It seemed to him that the whole world around him was transformed.

They walked out of the church together, and when they stood in the sunlight he turned to her.

"My darling, my wife," he said, in an impassioned voice, "may Heaven send to us a life bright as this sunshine, love as pure--life and death together! I pray Heaven that no deeper cloud may come over our lives than there is now in the sky above us."

These words were spoken at only eleven in the morning. If he had known all that he would have to suffer before eleven at night, Lord Arleigh, with all his bravery, all his chivalry, would have been ready to fling himself from the green hill-top into the shimmering sea.

Chapter XXIV.

It was the custom of the Arleighs to spend their honeymoon at home; they had never fallen into the habit of making themselves uncomfortable abroad. The proper place, they considered, for a man to take his young wife to was home; the first Lord Arleigh had done so, and each lord had followed this sensible example. Norman, Lord Arleigh, had not dreamed of making any change. True, he had planned with his fair young bride that when the autumn month had passed away they would go abroad, and not spend the winter in cold, foggy England. They had talked of the cities they would visit--and Madaline's sweet eyes had grown brighter with happy thoughts. But that was not to be yet; they were to go home first, and when they had learned something of what home-life would be together, then they could go abroad.