Lady Lochinvar explained that, much as she detested London, she had felt it her solemn duty to establish herself there during her nephew’s engagement, in order that she might become acquainted with Pamela’s people, and assist her dear boy in all his arrangements for the future. When a young man marries a nice girl with an estate worth fifteen hundred a year—allowing for the poor return made by land nowadays—everything ought to go upon velvet. Lady Lochinvar was prepared to make sacrifices, or, in other words, to contribute a handsome portion of that fortune which she intended to bequeath to her nephew. She could afford to be generous, having a surplus far beyond her possible needs, and she was very fond of Malcolm Stuart, who had been to her as a son.
“I was quite alone in the world when my husband died,” she told Mildred. “My father and my own people were all gone, and I should have been a wretched creature without Malcolm. He was the only son of Lochinvar’s favourite sister, who went off in a decline when he was eight years old, and he had been brought up at the Castle. So it is natural, you see, that I should be fond of him and interested in his welfare.”
Pamela kissed her, by way of commentary.
“I think you are quite the dearest thing in the world,” she said, “except Aunt Mildred.”
It may be seen from this remark that the elder and younger lady were now on very easy terms. Mildred had stayed in Paris with Lady Lochinvar, and a considerable part of her trousseau, the outward and visible part, had been chosen in the ateliers of fashionable Parisian dressmakers and man milliners. The more humdrum portion of the bride’s raiment was to be obtained at Brighton, where Pamela was to spend a week or two with her aunt before she went to London to stay with the Mountfords, who had taken a house in Grosvenor Gardens, from which Pamela was to be married.
“And where do you think we are to be married, aunt?” exclaimed Pamela excitedly.
“At St. George’s?”
“Nothing so humdrum. We are going to be married in the Abbey—in Westminster Abbey—the burial-place of heroes and poets. I happened to say one day when Malcolm and I were almost strangers—it was at Rumpelmeyer’s, sitting outside in the sun, eating ices—that I had never seen a wedding in the Abbey, and that I should love to see one; and Malcolm said we must try and manage it some day—meaning anybody’s wedding, of course, though he pretends now that he always meant to marry me there himself.”
“Presumptious on his part,” said Mildred, smiling.
“O, young men are horribly presumptious; they know they are in a minority—there is so little competition—and a plain young man, too, like Malcolm. But I suppose he knows he is nice,” added Pamela conclusively.