‘Kenrick,’ said Beatrix a little later, when she and her lover were walking to the Water House together through the wintry night, ‘is it really necessary for your cousin to be at our wedding?’
‘His absence might cause a scandal, dearest. Remember, he is my nearest relation, known to be quite near at hand, and closely associated with this place. Do you not think that people would say unpleasant things if we left him out?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Beatrix, ‘people have a knack of imagining the worst.’
‘I should be very sorry if any one were to say that Cyril was absent from my wedding because he and my wife feared to meet,’ said Kenrick, with a sudden pang of jealousy.
‘They shall have no reason for saying anything of the kind,’ Beatrix answered, proudly. ‘Pray invite your cousin.’
‘Now you are angry.’
‘Not with you,’ she answered, quickly. ‘I am angry with the world, life, fate.’
‘What, Beatrix, now, after you have made me so happy, when all our life is smiling upon us—every cloud gone?’
Beatrix’s only answer was a sigh. But Kenrick was rapt in the placid delight of his good fortune. He loved his betrothed too well to believe it possible that she did not love him. They had lived so happily, as it seemed to him, for nearly four months, in each other’s society. They had never had a dispute—or even a difference of opinion. Could he doubt that she had grown fonder of him day by day in all that time? Her irritation to-night was natural, he argued. It arose from her scorn of the scandals that had darkened her young life. It was hard for her to forget these things.
Kenrick wrote next day to his cousin: