“Don’t you think it will be lovely for me to be married in the Abbey?” she asked presently.
“I think, dear, in your case I would rather have been married from my own house, and in a village church.”
“What, in that poky little church at Mapledown? I believe it is one of the oldest in England, and it is certainly one of the ugliest. Sir Henry Mountford suggested making a family business of it; but Rosalind and I were both in favour of the Abbey. We shall get much better notices in the society papers,” added Pamela, with a business-like air, as if she had been talking about the production of a new play.
“Well, dear, as I hope you are only to be married once in your life, you have a right to choose your church.”
Pamela was bitterly disappointed presently when her aunt refused to be present at her wedding.
“I will spend an hour with you on your wedding morning, and see you in your wedding-gown, if you like, Pamela; but I cannot go among a crowd of gay people, or share in any festivity. I have done with all those things, dear, for ever and ever.”
Pamela’s candid eyes filled with tears. She felt all the more sorry for her aunt, because her own cup of happiness was overflowing. She looked round the silver-gray drawing-room, and her eyes fixed themselves on the piano which he had played, so often, so often, in the tender twilight, in the shadowy evening when that larger room was left almost without any light save that which came through the undraped archway yonder. But Castellani was no longer a person to be thought of in italics. From the moment Pamela’s eyes had opened to the excellence of Mr. Stuart’s manly and straightforward character, they had also become aware of the Italian’s deficiencies. She had realised the fact that he was a charlatan; and now she looked wonderingly at the piano, at a loss to understand the intensity of bygone emotions, and inclined to excuse herself upon the ground of youthful foolishness.
“What a silly romantic wretch I must have been!” she thought; “a regular Rosa Matilda! As if the happiness of life depended upon one’s husband having an ear for music!”
Mildred was by no means unsympathetic about the trousseau, although she herself had done with all interest in fashion and finery. She drove about to the pretty Brighton shops with Pamela, and exercised a restraining influence upon that young lady’s taste, which inclined to the florid. She sympathised with the young lady’s anxiety about her wedding-gown, which was to be made by a certain Mr. Smithson, a faiseur who held potent sway over the ladies of fashionable London, and who gave himself more airs than a Prime Minister. Mr. Smithson had consented to make Miss Ransome a wedding-gown—despite her social insignificance and the pressure of the season—provided that he were not worried about the affair.
“If I have too many people calling upon me, or am pestered with letters, I shall throw the thing up,” he told Lady Mountford one morning, when she took him some fine old rose-point for the petticoat. “Yes, this lace is pretty good. I suppose you got it in Venice. I have seen Miss Ransome, and I know what kind of gown she can wear. It will be sent home the day before the wedding.”