He could not prevent several of the strongest ones from stepping forward, however, and taking the stretcher in their own hands, and bearing Villard very gently to the waiting carriage.
“I never thought to enter this house so,” Villard whispered to Salome, when he was carefully borne up the stairs in the Shepard mansion and placed tenderly in bed.
“Thank Heaven, you were permitted to come, even so,” she replied, with a shudder. He had been so near Death’s door, instead!
“I can’t and won’t say I approve of what you’ve done,” said Mrs. Soule that night. “If you must marry him at all, I could not see why you should want to do it then and there. You might have waited, I think, and had such a wedding as befits a daughter of the Bourdillons. Besides, all this watching and care has pulled you down. You look pale and worn. You’ll lose your beauty before you are thirty-five.”
Salome did not answer. These matters seemed so trivial.
“I suppose, at least, you’ll give a reception when he gets well enough. You really owe it to society and your own position. All your father’s, your mother’s, and your own friends will expect it. You have planned for that, I suppose? Since you had no wedding gown, you ought to give Redfern carte blanche for your reception gown. Have you written them?”
“Auntie,” said Salome, “John and I have been, in these past weeks, where we did not think of party gowns.”
“No, I suppose there was not much at Jones’s Crossing to remind you of them. But now, you certainly are thinking of one now?”
Salome sighed. There was really no use in expecting her little, exquisite, cameo-cut aunt to understand her.
“I suppose we may give some sort of reception. All my people are waiting anxiously to see John,” she said.