“Yes, yes,” said Mr Miles, half impatient, half smiling, “your young man’s idea of a reformer is a Briareus with a broom in each hand. It’s lucky we don’t all get treated in that fashion. Well, let me see your plans.”
Father and son went home the next day, as the Vicar desired, and the shadow passed,—or so it seemed. It might have been Mrs Miles’s little doctorings, or the return to the old routine of habit, which had grown into a second self; at any rate, the Vicar was apparently as well as he had been during the long years of his residence at Thorpe Regis, nor was there anything to distract his wife’s interest from Marion’s wedding when that took place a little later. No one could give any reason for delay strong enough to weigh down the girl’s impetuous demand; that her father and Anthony felt a vague uneasiness was not sufficient to do more than perhaps excite her to a determined attitude of defiance. To outward eyes there was everything that a wedding should have, youth and love, sunshine, roses in the old garden, smiles, brightness. Yet it was not all smooth. Marmaduke was restless, and his easy temper every now and then broke down in fits of irritation, while there was a visible restraint between himself and Anthony. Mr Miles was grave and sad throughout the day. After it was over, and Anthony had walked up to Hardlands to dinner, taking with him the few Vicarage guests, his father stood in the drawing-room in a manner altogether unlike himself, and looked wistfully at his wife.
“We have been happy together, Hannah,” he said slowly.
Mrs Miles’s eyes filled with tears at this sudden appeal.
“Very happy, William.”
“You have been a good wife,—it would be better perhaps if poor Marion were more like you. Somehow, I don’t feel so sure about things now,—I forget—”
“Forget? I am always forgetting,” said Mrs Miles consolingly. “I am sure you don’t lose your spectacles half so often as I do, and where they are now is more than I can really say. But it has all gone off as well as possible.”
“I wish I knew Marmaduke better.”
“My dear, when you have seen him since he was no higher than the table!”
“Poor Marion! Poor child!”