The sun shone, and the roses bloomed in all their summer glory. "'Twas in the time of roses," as gentle-minded Thomas Hood so sweetly sang; surely the time of all others for a bridal morning. The girl looked out into the sunshine with her loose hair falling about her shoulders, and lingered a little looking at the familiar garden, with a half-pensive smile.
"Oh, how often, how often," she said, "I have walked up and down by those laburnums, Letty!" There were two pretty white-curtained bedsteads in the old-fashioned room, and Miss Arundel had shared her friend's apartment for the last week. "How often mamma and I have sat under the dear old cedar, making our poor children's frocks! People say monotonous lives are not happy: mine has been the same thing over and over again; and yet how happy, how happy! And to think that we"—she paused a moment, and the rosy colour in her cheeks deepened by just one shade; it was so sweet to use that simple monosyllable "we" when Edward Arundel was the other half of the pronoun,—"to think that we shall be in Paris to-morrow!"
"Driving in the Bois," exclaimed Miss Arundel; "and dining at the Maison Dorée, or the Café de Paris. Don't dine at Meurice's, Linda; it's dreadfully slow dining at one's hotel. And you'll be a young married woman, and can do anything, you know. If I were a young married woman, I'd ask my husband to take me to the Mabille, just for half an hour, with an old bonnet and a thick veil. I knew a girl whose first-cousin married a cornet in the Guards, and they went to the Mabille one night. Come, Belinda, if you mean to have your back-hair done at all, you'd better sit down at once and let me commence operations."
Miss Arundel had stipulated that, upon this particular morning, she was to dress her friend's hair; and she turned up the frilled sleeves of her white dressing-gown, and set to work in the orthodox manner, spreading a network of shining tresses about Miss Lawford's shoulders, prior to the weaving of elaborate plaits that were to make a crown for the fair young bride. Letitia's tongue went as fast as her fingers; but Belinda was very silent.
She was thinking of the bounteous Providence that had given her the man she loved for her husband. She had been on her knees in the early morning, long before Letitia's awakening, breathing out innocent thanksgiving for the happiness that overflowed her fresh young heart. A woman had need to be country-bred, and to have been reared in the narrow circle of a happy home, to feel as Belinda Lawford felt. Such love as hers is only given to bright and innocent spirits, untarnished even by the knowledge of sin.
Downstairs Edward Arundel was making a wretched pretence of breakfasting tête-à-tête with his future father-in-law.
The Major had held his peace as to the unlooked-for visitant of the past night. He had given particular orders that no stranger should be admitted to the house, and that was all. But being of a naturally frank, not to say loquacious disposition, the weight of this secret was a very terrible burden to the honest half-pay soldier. He ate his dry toast uneasily, looking at the door every now and then, in the perpetual expectation of beholding that barrier burst open by mad Olivia Marchmont.
The breakfast was not a very cheerful meal, therefore. I don't suppose any ante-nuptial breakfast ever is very jovial. There was the state banquet—the wedding breakfast—to be eaten by-and-by; and Mrs. Lawford, attended by all the females of the establishment, was engaged in putting the last touches to the groups of fruit and confectionery, the pyramids of flowers, and that crowning glory, the wedding-cake.
"Remember the Madeira and still Hock are to go round first, and then the sparkling; and tell Gogram to be particular about the corks, Martha," Mrs. Lawford said to her confidential maid, as she gave a nervous last look at the table. "I was at a breakfast once where a champagne-cork hit the bridegroom on the bridge of his nose at the very moment he rose to return thanks; and being a nervous man, poor fellow,—in point of fact, he was a curate, and the bride was the rector's daughter, with two hundred a year of her own,—it quite overcame him, and he didn't get over it all through the breakfast. And now I must run and put on my bonnet."
There was nothing but putting on bonnets, and pinning lace-shawls, and wild outcries for hair-pins, and interchanging of little feminine services, upon the bedroom floor for the next half-hour.