CHAPTER IX.
A SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.
The sun shone upon Ida's wedding morn. She was dressed and down before seven—her shabby cashmere gown carefully brushed, her splendid hair neatly arranged, her linen collar and cuffs spotlessly clean. This was all she could do in the way of costume in honour of this solemn day. She had not even a new pair of gloves. Mrs. Topman, who was to go to church with her in a fly from Chertsey, was gorgeous in purple silk and a summer bonnet—a grand institution, worn only on Sundays. Breakfast was ready in the neat little parlour, but Ida would only take a cup of tea. She wandered out to the river-side, and looked at the weir and the little green island round which the shining blue water twined itself like a caress. All things looked lovely in the pure freshness of morning.
'What a sweet spot it is!' said Ida to Mrs. Topman, who stood at her gate, watching for the fly, which was not due for half an hour; 'I should almost like to spend my life here.'
'Almost, but not quite,' answered the matron. 'Young folks like you wants change. But I hope you and Mr. Wendover will come here sometimes in the boating season, in memory of old times.'
'We'll come often,' said Ida; 'I hope I shall always remember how kind you have been to me.'
A distant church clock struck the half hour.
'Only half-past seven,' exclaimed Mrs. Topman, 'and Simmons's fly is not to be here till eight. Well, we are early.'
Ida strolled a little way along the bank, glad to be alone. It was an awful business, this marriage, when she came to the very threshold of Hymen's temple. Yesterday it had seemed to her that she and Brian Wendover were familiar friends; to-day she thought of him almost as a stranger.
'How little we know of each other, and yet we are going to take the most solemn vow that ever was vowed,' she thought, as she read the marriage service in a Prayer-book which Mrs. Topman had lent her for that purpose.