Christabel went with slow, reluctant steps, ashamed of the weakness which had yielded to persuasion and not to duty. But when Mrs. Tregonell heard the news from the triumphant lover, the light of happiness that shone upon the wan face was almost an all-sufficing reward for this last sacrifice.
"My love, my love," cried the widow, clasping her niece to her breast. "You have made my last earthly days happy. I have thought you cold and hard. I feared that I should die before you relented; but now you have made me glad and grateful. I reared you for this, I taught you for this, I have prayed for this ever since you were a child. I have prayed that my son might have a pure and perfect wife: and God has granted my prayer."
After this came a period of such perfect content and tranquillity for the invalid, that Christabel forgot her own sorrows. She lived in an atmosphere of gladness; congratulations, gifts, were pouring in upon her every day; her aunt petted and cherished her, was never weary of praising and caressing her. Leonard was all submission as a lover. Major Bree was delighted at the security which this engagement promised for the carrying on of the line of Champernownes and Tregonells—the union of two fine estates. He had looked forward to a dismal period when the widow would be laid in her grave, her son a wanderer, and Christabel a resident at Plymouth or Bath; while spiders wove their webs in shadowy corners of the good old Manor House, and mice, to all appearance self-sustaining, scampered and scurried behind the panelling.
Jessie Bridgeman was the only member of Christabel's circle who refrained from any expression of approval.
"Did I not tell you that you must end by marrying him?" she exclaimed. "Did I not say that if you stayed here the thing was inevitable? Continual dropping will wear away a stone; the stone is a fixture and can't help being dropped upon; but if you had stuck to your colours and gone to Leipsic to study the piano, you would have escaped the dropping."
As there was no possible reason for delay, while there was a powerful motive for a speedy marriage, in the fact of Mrs. Tregonell's precarious health, and her ardent desire to see her son and her niece united before her fading eyes closed for ever upon earth and earthly cares, Christabel was fain to consent to the early date which her aunt and her lover proposed, and to allow all arrangements to be hurried on with that view.
So in the dawning of the year, when Proserpine's returning footsteps were only faintly indicated by pale snowdrops and early violets lurking in sheltered hedges, and by the gold and purple of crocuses in all the cottage gardens, Christabel put on her wedding gown, and whiter than the pale ivory tint of the soft sheeny satin, took her seat in the carriage beside her adopted mother, to be driven down into the valley, and up the hilly street, where all the inhabitants of Boscastle—save those who had gone on before to congregate by the lich-gate—were on the alert to see the bride go by.
Mrs. Tregonell was paler than her niece, the fine regular features blanched with that awful pallor which tells of disease—but her eyes were shining with the light of gladness.
"My darling," she murmured, as they drove down to the harbour bridge, "I have loved you all your life, but never as I love you to-day. My dearest, you have filled my soul with content."
"I thank God that it should be so," faltered Christabel.