The real motive was probably a love of excitement; and Miss Anna Hethbridge is not the only woman, by many thousands, who has married for that same reason.
The wedding was celebrated quietly at the Clapham parish church. A humiliating day for the stiff-necked old Squire of Stagholme; for he was introduced to many new relatives, who, if they could have bought up Stagholme and its master, were but poorly equipped with the letter “h.” The bourgeois ostentation and would-be high-toned graciousness of the ladies, jarred on his nerves as harshly as did the personal appearance of their respective husbands.
Altogether it was just possible that Squire Agar began to realise the extent of his own foolishness before the effervescence had left the champagne that flowed freely to the health of bride and bride-groom.
The event was duly announced in the leading newspapers, and in the course of a few days a copy of the Times containing the insertion started eastward to meet Seymour Michael on his way home from India.
Anna Agar came home to Stagholme to begin her new life; for which peaceful groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for she had breathed the fatal air of Clapham since her birth. This atmosphere is terribly impregnated with the microbe of bourgeoisie.
But the novelty of the great house had that all-absorbing fascination exercised over shallow minds by anything that is new. At first she maintained excitedly that there was no life like a country life—no centre more suited for such an ideal existence than Stagholme. For a time she forgot Seymour Michael; but love is eminently deceitful. It lies in a comatose silence for many years and then suddenly springs to life. Sometimes the long period of rest has strengthened it—sometimes the time has been passed in a chrysalis stage from which Love awakens to find itself changed into Hatred.
Little Jem, her stepson—sturdy, fair, silent—was her first failure.
“Come to your mother, dear,” she said, with unguarded enthusiasm one afternoon when there were callers in the room.
“I cannot go to my mother,” replied the youthful James, with his mouth full of cake, “because she is dead.”
There was an uncompromising matter-of-factness about this simple statement, made in all good faith and honesty, which warned the second Mrs. Agar to press the matter no farther just then. But she was so intent upon exhibiting to her neighbours the maternal affection which she persuaded herself that she felt for the plain-spoken heir to Stagholme, that she took him to task afterwards. With great care and an utter lack of logic she devoted some hours to the instruction of Jem in the somewhat crooked ways of her social creed.