The Signora wore a rustling black silk dress—Eleanor’s present of the previous Christmas—in honour of her protégée’s wedding; but Eliza Picirillo’s heart was sadly divided upon this quiet bridal day; half rejoicing in Miss Vane’s fortune and advancement; half sorrowful for poor desolate Dick wandering away amongst the swamps by the water-side.
Mr. Monckton and his two partners were waiting for the bride in the portico of the church. The senior of the two, an old man with white hair, was to give Eleanor away, and paid her many appropriate though rather obsolete compliments upon the occasion. Perhaps it was now for the first time that Miss Vane began to regard the step she was about to take as one of a somewhat serious and indeed awful nature; perhaps it was now for the first time that she began to think she had committed a sin in accepting Gilbert Monckton’s love so lightly.
“If he knew that I did not promise to marry him because I loved him, but because I wanted to get back to Hazlewood,” she thought.
But presently the grave shadows passed away from her face and a faint blush rose to her cheek and brow.
“I will love him by-and-by, when I have avenged my father’s death,” she said to herself.
Some such thought as this was in her mind when she took her place beside Gilbert Monckton at the altar.
The autumn sunshine streamed in upon them through the great windows of the church, and wrapped them in yellow light, like the figures of Joseph and Mary in an old picture. The bride and bridegroom looked very handsome standing side by side in this yellow sunshine. Gilbert Monckton’s twenty years’ seniority only dignified and exalted him; investing the holy marriage promise of love and protection with a greater solemnity than it could have had when spoken by a stripling of one or two and twenty.
Everything seemed auspicious upon this wedding morning. The lawyer’s partners were in the highest spirits, the beadle and pew-opener were elevated by the idea of prospective donations. The Signora wept quietly while the marriage service was being read, thinking of her nephew Richard smoking and drinking desperately, perhaps, in his desolate painting-room; but when the ceremony was over the good music-mistress dried her tears, banishing all traces of sorrow before she kissed and complimented the bride.
“You are to come and see us at the Priory, dear Signora,” Eleanor said, as she clung about her friend before leaving the vestry; “Gilbert says so, you know.”
Her voice faltered a little, and she glanced shyly at her husband as she spoke of him by his Christian name. It seemed as if she had no right to allude so familiarly to Mr. Monckton, of Tolldale Priory. And presently Eliza Picirillo stood alone—or attended only by the beadle, obsequiously attentive in proportion to the liberality of the donation he had just received—under the portico of the Bloomsbury church, watching the lawyer’s carriage drive away towards the Great Northern railway station. Mr. Monckton, in the absence of any preference upon Eleanor’s part, had chosen a quiet Yorkshire watering-place as the scene of his honeymoon.