[CHAPTER XXXIX.]
Coombe Ashton, Sept. 10.
HERE am I, Rosamond Corbet no more, but Rosamond Stanton, a sober matron of a week's standing. After all we changed our plans at the last, and came on here the day but one after the wedding, on account of some business which had to be attended to. Alice was quite furious at my being carried off so soon, but none of us at Stanton-Corbet were in any mood for festivity, and I was by no means sorry to escape the usual round of wedding banquets and jests, and have a little time to think. My father and mother and Joyce came over with us, and left us only this morning.
We are all sad at Harry's going away, and Joyce is broken-hearted. I expected from her a tempest of grief, and then all over; but it goes much deeper than that. I do believe those two childish hearts have waked up to real love. I had a long talk with Joyce yesterday, telling her how she must strive to be docile and cheerful, so as to take my place as a daughter at home, and make them all happy.
"I will do my best," said she, "but I can never make your place good, Rosamond."
"Nobody can ever exactly fill another's place perhaps," said I; "but we can all do our best to adorn our own. You have a great deal to learn, 'tis true, but your capacity is good, and in my mother and Master Ellenwood you have the kindest of teachers. Now, what are you smiling at?"
"Because you talk so old!" answered the saucy popinjay. "One would think Mistress Stanton was twenty years older than our Rosamond!"
"Whereas she is really many years younger," I answered, glad to see her laugh, though at my own expense. She sobered down, however, and begged my pardon for her sauciness, adding that she meant to be very good, and learn everything that my mother would teach her.
"And I mean to be happy, too!" she added, very resolutely, though with some bright drops standing in her eyes. "I am so thankful to Sir Stephen, that it does not seem as if I could ever do enough for him. Madam says I must thank God too, and I do. When I think how I lived with my Lady Carey, it seems as if I had been in a bad dream from which you came and waked me. It was a blessed wakening for me."
And for us too, I told her, and indeed I think it will prove so—she shows herself so well conditioned, and it will be a real blessing to Harry to have a wife brought up under our mother's eye. But that is looking very far forward.