“She may last for years, perhaps,” said the physician, pitying the husband’s silent agony, “but it would be idle to disguise her state. She will never be strong again. She must not ride, or drive, or occupy herself in any way that can involve violent exertion, or a shock to the nerves. Cherish her as a hothouse flower, and she may be with you for some time yet.”
“God bless you, even for that hope,” said Greswold, and then he spoke of his niece’s wedding, and the wish for Mildred’s presence.
“No harm in a wedding, I think, if you are careful of her: no over-exertion, no agitating scenes. The wedding may cheer her, and prevent her brooding on her own state. Good-day. I shall be glad to know the effect of my prescription, and to see Mrs. Greswold again in a month or two, if she is strong enough to come to London. If you want me at any time in the country—”
“You will come, will you not? Remember she is all that is precious to me upon this earth. If I lose her I lose everything.”
“Send for me at any time. If it is possible for me to go to you I will go.”
CHAPTER XI.
LIKE A TALE THAT IS TOLD.
Pamela’s wedding was one of the most successful functions of the London season; and the society papers described the ceremony with a fulness of detail which satisfied even the bride’s avidity for social fame. Mr. Smithson sent her gown just an hour before it had to make its reverence before the altar in the Abbey; and Pamela, who had been in an almost hysterical agony for an hour-and-a-half, lest she should have no gown in which to be married, owned, as she pirouetted before the chevalglass, that the fit was worth the suspense.
The ladies who write fashion articles in the two social arbiters were rapturous about Mr. Smithson’s chef-d’œuvre, and gave glowing accounts of certain trousseau gowns which they had been privileged to review at an afternoon tea in Grosvenor Gardens a week before the event. Pamela’s delight in these paragraphs was intensified by the idea that César Castellani would read them, though it is hardly likely that listless skimmer of modern literature went so deep as fashion articles.
“He will see at least that if he had married me he would not have married quite a nobody,” said Pamela, in a summer reverie upon the blue water in front of The Hook, where she and her husband dawdled about in a punt nearly all day, expatiating upon each other’s merits. And so floats this light bark gaily into a safe and placid haven, out of reach of privateer or pirate such as the incomparable Castellani.