“Let me take you home, Isa,” he said. “You’ll be better at home, lying down by your sunny window. This vestry is horribly cold. Hulbert, if you and Allegra will excuse me, I won’t see you off at the station. Father Rodwell will go with you, perhaps. He’ll be of more use than I could be; and we shall see each other very soon again in Switzerland, please God.”
“Yes, yes, There is no need for you to go,” Hulbert answered, grasping his hand, distressed for another man’s pain in the midst of his own happiness. There death, and the end of all joy—here the new life with its promises of gladness just opening before him. Such contrasts must needs seem hard.
They all went to the church door, where the carriages were waiting. Only a few idlers loitered about the pavement, faintly interested in so shabby a wedding—a poor array of one landau and one brougham, the brougham to take the travellers to the station, where their luggage had been sent by another conveyance.
The two women kissed each other once more before Allegra stepped into the carriage, Isola too weak for speech, and able only to clasp the hands that had waited on her in so many a weary hour; the clever hands, the gentle hands, to which womanly instinct and womanly love had given all the skilfulness of a trained nurse.
Disney lifted his wife into the landau, Father Rodwell helping him, full of sympathy.
“You’ll dine with us to-night, I hope,” said the colonel. “We shall be very low if we are left to ourselves.”
“I’ve an engagement for this evening—but—yes, I’ll get myself excused, and spend the evening with you, if you really want me.”
“Indeed we do,” answered Disney, heartily; but Isola was dumb. Her eyes were fixed upon the distant point at which the brougham had disappeared round a corner, on its way to the station.