In spite of her grief, Mrs. Whittaker was able to grasp the majesty of his offer, and took care that night to show her daughter how necessary it was, for all their sakes, that she should marry well. Guinevere, however, could not see it in the same light. If it had been Lancelot, she would have been only too happy, she said; but even for her family's sake she was not going to marry anybody else. The mother postponed the matter for a week, then she argued, pleaded, threatened, and finally wept; but her daughter remained obstinate.
Knowing all this, you can imagine our surprise when, two months later, the engagement of King Arthur to beautiful Guinevere was publicly announced. But what amazed us still more was the fact that Lancelot did not seem to be affected thereby in the very smallest degree. His heart complaint was rapidly developing itself, and perhaps his valve demanded his complete attention.
If, however, we had seen a certain little letter, smeared with tear-stains and innumerable blotches, we might have understood matters; but as we did not, we had, like a certain lady of scriptural fame, to argue on what might be called insufficient premises.
Towards the end of June, Arthur and Guinevere were married in the Anglican Cathedral, the Lord Bishop officiating.
It was in all respects a brilliant wedding, and the bridegroom's present to the bride was a thing to see and marvel over. Guinevere walked through the ceremony as if she had been doing nothing else from childhood. (As I have said, she was desperately thorough in all she undertook.) Lancelot was not present; his health would not permit of it, he said.
The happy couple left the same day in the steamer Chang-Sha, to spend their honeymoon in Japan.
One morning, on arrival at the office, Lancelot found a letter on his table. It was from an eminent firm of English solicitors, and informed him of the death of an unknown relative, who, in consideration perhaps of their never having met, had left him the sum of thirty thousand pounds snugly invested.
He was barely interested, and asked what earthly manner of use it was to him now? Any one could see that he was growing daily worse, and I believe it was that very week that his doctor first insisted that he should resign his appointments and settle down in some quiet place, where he could not be excited in any shape or form. He was only thirty-three, but a very old man.
Early in December the happy couple returned to the south. The hot weather had commenced, again everybody was resident in the hills. Arthur and his wife went straight to the palace on the mountain-road, and on her first "afternoon," Guinevere's large drawing-room was filled with callers. Two things were painfully evident to the least observant: she was only a walking skeleton, while her husband was cleaner and more distressfully polite than ever. At first, we didn't know how to account for it; but men who saw his brandy-pegs understood what they meant, and told their women-folk, who, as usual, spread the report abroad.