"Because it is the first time that she ever thoroughly feels what a momentous and mysterious thing life is:" answered Roderick.
"But our bride," continued the girl, "in her gravity goes far beyond all I have ever yet seen. Indeed there is always something melancholy about her, and one can never catch her in a downright merry laugh."
"This does the more honour to her heart," replied Roderick, himself more serious than usual. "You don't know perhaps that the bride a few years ago took a lovely little orphan girl into her house, to educate her. All her time was devoted to this child, and the gentle creature's love was her sweetest reward. When the girl was seven years old, she was lost on a walk about the town; and in spite of all the pains that have been used, nobody has ever found out what became of her. Our noble-minded hostess has taken this misfortune so much to heart, that she has been a prey ever since to silent grief, and nothing can win her mind away from longing after her little playfellow."
"A most interesting adventure indeed!" said the young lady. "One might see a whole romance in three volumes growing out of this seed. It will be a strange sight, and it will not be for nothing, when this lost star reappears. What a pretty poem it would make! Don't you think so, sir?"
The party took their seats: the bride and bridegroom were in the centre, looking out on the gay landscape. Everybody talkt and drank healths, and all was mirth and good humour: the bride's parents were perfectly happy: the bridegroom alone was reserved and thoughtful, ate but little, and took no part in the conversation.
He started on hearing musical sounds roll down through the air from above, but grew calm again when he found they were only the soft notes of some bugles, travelling along with a pleasant murmur over the shrubs and through the park, and dying away on the distant hills. Roderick had placed the musicians in the gallery overhead, and Emilius was satisfied with this arrangement.
Toward the end of the dinner he called the butler, and, turning to his bride, said: "My love, let poverty also have a share of our superfluities."
He then ordered him to send a number of bottles of wine, and abundance of pastry as well as other dishes, to the poor couple, that with them too this might be a day of rejoicing, to which in aftertimes they might look back with pleasure.
"See my friend," exclaimed Roderick, "how beautifully all things in this world hang together! My idle trick of busying myself in other folks' concerns, and chattering about whatever comes uppermost, though you will never give over finding fault with it, has at all events been the cause of this good deed."
Several persons began making pretty speeches to their host on his kind and charitable heart; and Roderick's neighbour lispt about the sweetness of romantic compassion and sentimental magnanimity.