The intelligence which reached Gertrude of her sister through her uncle and aunt was too vague to satisfy her. Eleanor was very popular, very much admired; Eleanor's entertainments were splendid; and Mrs. Carteret felt convinced she and Meredith Baldwin lived fully up to their income, large as it was. She really could not say whether Eleanor was _happy_, according to dear Gertrude's strange exaggerated notions. She had at least everything which ought to make her so, and she was always in very high spirits. She was rather restless and fond of change, and no doubt Meredith was a good deal away from her; and then poor dear Eleanor had always had a strong dash of jealousy in her disposition, and she never was remarkably reasonable. No doubt she did occasionally make herself unpleasant and ridiculous if her husband stayed away when she thought he ought to be with her; but she got over it again, and it did not signify. As to Meredith's ill-treating Eleanor, Mrs. Carteret begged Gertrude not to be so silly as to believe anything of the kind, if such ill-natured reports should reach her. Why, everybody knew Meredith was no fool; and if Eleanor (who was very delicate--and no wonder, considering her restless racketing) did not make a will in his favour, he would have nothing at all in case of her death. There was no heir to the Deane--two infants had been born, but each had lived only a few hours--and Mrs. Carteret knew positively that Eleanor had made no will. Meredith was not likely (supposing him to have no better motive--which Mrs. Carteret, though her tone had become greatly modified of late in speaking of her quondam admirer, could not endure to suppose) to endanger his chance of future independent wealth by ill-treating the person who could confer it on him.
This was poor comfort; but it was all Gertrude could get, and she was forced to be content with it. The old life at the Deane had faded away; no change could bring her back the past; she never could have any interest in it. She sometimes speculated upon whether it would add to her grief, if her sister died, to think of her father's property, her own old home, in the possession of total strangers. She had hardly ever heard anything of the next heir--a bachelor, already a rich man, living in England. This gentleman's name was Mordaunt, and he had a younger brother, who had assumed another name on his marriage, and to whose children the Deane, failing direct heirs of Eleanor, would descend. The sisters knew nothing more of these distant connections, nor had there ever been any acquaintance between them and Fitzwilliam Baldwin.
Though Gertrude sometimes pondered on these things it must not be supposed that she brooded on them, or that the irrevocable past filled an undue place in her practical and useful life. The misfortune which had befallen her had from the first its alleviations; and there came a day when Gertrude would have eagerly denied that it was a misfortune at all--a day when she would have declared it was the source of all her happiness, the providential solution of every doubt and difficulty which had beset her path. What that day was the reader is soon to know.
The first act of Mr. Dugdale when the truth was made known to him--when he clearly understood that once more the foreboding of the woman he had loved and mourned with such matchless and abiding constancy had been fulfilled so many years after its shadow had darkened her day--was to declare his intention of immediately leaving the Deane, and forming a new home for Gertrude. How devoutly he thanked God then for the life at whose duration he had been sometimes tempted to murmur, the length of days which had enabled him to profit by the impulse which had prompted him to decline to add to the ruin which, in their blindness, they had all accumulated to heap in Gertrude's path! When he explained this to her, and made her see how her father and mother had loved her, great peace came to Gertrude, and much happiness in the perfect confidence between her and her aged friend, owning no exception now. In his zeal for Margaret's child, Mr. Dugdale seemed to find strength which had not been his for years. He bore the journey to the neighbourhood of London, whither Mrs. Doran had preceded them for the purpose of engaging a house for them, well; and he settled into his new home as readily as Gertrude did.
In a neat small house in a western suburb of London, George Ritherdon found Mr. Dugdale and her whom he had last seen in all the lustre of wealth and station, when he returned from the long absence which had been occasioned by his mother's illness and subsequent death. George was perfectly conscious that neither his voice nor his manner, when he was introduced by the faithful Rose with manifest satisfaction, conveyed the impression which might have been considered suitable to the occasion, whether regarded from their point of view or from his. He knew his eyes were bright and his cheek flushed; he knew his voice was thrilling with pleasure, with happiness, with hope; and he abandoned any attempt to express a sadness he did not feel, to affect to grieve for a change in Gertrude's circumstances and position which rendered him exquisitely happy, and for which he, though by no means a presumptuous man, felt an inward irresistible conviction he should be able to console her.
In less than a year from the falling of the long-planned blow on Gertrude Baldwin's defenceless head, the day before alluded to had dawned upon her--the day on which she recognised the seemingly insurmountable misfortune of her life as its greatest blessing and the source of all its happiness. It was her wedding-day. There was no need for waiting longer for equality in their fortunes; there was no need to think of what the world might say of George or of her. The world she had lived in had ceased to remember and to talk of her; the world he lived in would respect him, as it had ever done, and welcome her. Theirs was a quiet happy courtship, a peaceful hopeful time, blessed with their old friend's earnest approval and loving presence. A rational prospect of the best kind of content this world can give was opening before them--a prospect of neither poverty nor riches, of no distinction in mere name--the meaningless legacy of others--but of a position to be worthily won. Mutual love, confidence, and respect, and such experience of life as, leaving them the power of enjoying its good, should save them from its illusions--such was the dowry with which these two began their married life.
Major and Mrs. Carteret attended the quiet wedding, at which they and two friends of George Ritherdon's were the only guests. Gertrude had hoped that Mrs. Carteret would have been the bearer to her of some communication from her sister, that the barrier, which she felt no doubt had been interposed by Meredith's authority, would on this occasion be broken down. But Eleanor still made no sign; and Mrs. Carteret could tell Gertrude no more than that Eleanor had heard the news of her sister's intended marriage with agitation, but in silence, and that she was then in London, _en route_ for the Continent, where she was to pass the winter. This was a cloud; but it was the only one upon the brightness of Gertrude's wedding-day, and it soon passed over. It had quite passed when the bride and bridegroom were bidding farewell to Mr. Dugdale, before they went away on their brief wedding-trip. It was to be very brief; for they would not leave him alone for any length of time; and in the mean time Mr. Dugdale was to remove into the larger house in the same neighbourhood which was to be the home of George and Gertrude.
The farewell words had been spoken, and Gertrude had risen from her kneeling position beside the old man's chair, when the servant entered and handed Gertrude a parcel addressed to her by the name not three hours old, addressed to her in Eleanor's hand. She broke the seal, and the contents proved to be a flat case containing a suit of beautiful pearls. A scrap of paper lay among the jewels. Gertrude seized it eagerly and read:
"_Wear these, darling, for the sake of old times, and of me. Forgive me, and make your husband forgive me, and love me a little even yet and after all, as I love you forever and better than all_."
As Gertrude's tears fell fast upon the precious words, and George and Mr. Dugdale looked at her, distressed and yet glad, Rose Doran came to her side, and said, while she dried her eyes as if she were still the child she had nursed: