“Oh, Richard, you will never be able to do that,” she remonstrated; “remember how such a question must distress her.”
“Which do you think will distress her most—to be asked abruptly to give her confidence to a person who is anxious to befriend her, or to spend her life with one man, when all the time she loves another?” inquired Frere almost sternly. Then laying his hand on Rose’s head and stroking her glossy hair, he continued, “No! no! Rosey, away with all such sophistries; they are the devil’s emissaries to render people first miserable, and then reckless and wicked. Marriages, properly so termed, may be made in Heaven, but depend upon it, the spurious articles too often foisted upon the public under that name—alliances in which this world’s goods are everything, and the treasures of the next world nothing—come from quite another manufactory.”
Then there was a pause, and then Rose inquired when he proposed to set out.
“Why, there is no good in procrastinating,” was the reply; “the sooner I start the sooner I shall be back again, so to-morrow the lawyer gets the necessary papers ready; the next day good Lady Goosecap here is to be married, and I mean to attend the ceremony in order to learn how to behave on such an occasion; and the day after that, if nothing unforeseen occurs to prevent me, I’m off!”
“You will write very often—every——” (Frere raised his eyebrows) “well then, every other day, will you not?” urged Rose appealingly.
“What queer things women are!” soliloquised Frere. “Now, if you had been going to the North Pole,” he continued, addressing Rose, “it would never have occurred to me to ask you to write—I should have taken it for granted that if you had discovered the northwest passage, or done anything else worth mentioning, you would have let one know; and why people write if they have nothing to say I can’t think.”
“At all events, it is a satisfaction when we are parted from those who are dear to us to be assured that they are well,” suggested Rose.
“Oh, nothing ever ails me,” replied Frere, quietly appropriating the remark; “there is not a doctor in the country who has ever received one farthing of my money; and as to physic—throw physic to the dogs, always supposing you to have any such abomination to dispose of, and any dogs at hand to throw it to: it’s a thing I don’t know the taste of, and where ignorance is bliss—well, never mind, I’ll write to you all the same, if you have a weakness that way, whenever I can find pens, paper, and a post-office; only if my letters should happen to be rather prosy, somewhat in the much-ado-about-nothing style, small blame to me, that’s all.” Thus the expedition was agreed upon, and Rose having told Frere some hundred things which he was to say to and inquire of Lewis, sat down to write a few more “notes and queries,” winding up with a pathetic appeal to her brother to bring his self-imposed exile to a conclusion.
So the silver-footed hours turned round the treadmill of time, till the dewy morn appeared which was to witness the celebration of the nuptials of Lady Lombard and the mighty Marmaduke De Grande-ville. Oh, the ardour and bustle of that devoted household! As for the servants, so late did they sit up and so early did they rise, that going to bed at all became rather a superstitious observance than a beneficial practice. Then everybody had to dress, first themselves and then somebody else; and the amount of white muslin concentrated in that happy family rendered space crisp, and gave a look of pastoral simplicity to the most iniquitously gorgeous arrangements of modern upholstery.
The bride’s dress was wonderful—words are powerless to describe it—happy those women who, favoured beyond all other daughters of Eve, were permitted to behold it. One very young lady, rash in her ignorance, ventured to ask how much the lace cost a yard. The French artiste, Mademoiselle Melanie Amandine Celestine Seraphine Belledentelles, piously invoked six authorised female saints, besides the deceased Madame Tournour, at whose flounces she had sat to acquire her art, and whom, on her lamented removal to Père la Chaise, she had privately canonised for her own especial use and behoof, and thus supported did not faint. The “mistress of the robes,” a black-eyed, brown-cheeked grisette, turned as pale as her complexion permitted her and sank upon a chair, but being unprovided with a smelling-bottle, thought it advisable not to proceed to extremities, and the mother of the culprit hurried forward, and with great presence of mind led her from the room—such mysteries are not for the profane.