“The bridal party will spend both Monday and Tuesday evenings, besides breakfasting here on Tuesday morning. So you girls may bring evening dresses.
“The bridesmaids are to wear blue muslin or lawn skirts, with white muslin basques—a neat breakfast costume that will look pretty as a uniform, and be becoming to all of you, without throwing my quiet travelling attire too much into the shade. You know that at a morning wedding it is customary for each to dress as she pleases. This never pleased my fancy. The company wears a motley look. Full bridal robes would be equally out of place. Therefore, we have selected this medium.
“Now, ma chère! cannot you keep your intention of the Richmond trip as profound a secret as you have other matters we wot of? Your father and mother must be apprized of it, and Colonel and Mrs. Graves; but, for a few days, cannot the story be kept within the two families? I trust you to do this for me.
“The Charlotte party will come down on Monday, the 1st. We shall expect you and Virginia some days in advance of that date. I hope to have everything in readiness, even to packing my trunks, by the middle of the preceding week, and to have time to enjoy your society. Write as soon as your plans are formed, and let that time be very soon. As to my trousseau—thanks to nimble and kind fingers, the work is nearly done. Next week my time is to be divided between the dressmaker and a gentleman who writes that he has ‘business to attend to in Richmond,’ and who, it is fair to presume, may call occasionally. The latest gossip is that there is to be a double wedding here next month; that both sisters are to be dressed precisely alike and be married in the evening. Therefore, come prepared for the worst—or the best, as the case may seem.
“To drop business and jesting together—it is very hard to realize that, if Providence permit, one little fortnight will bring such a change into my life. Here, in the home of my girlhood, where all else is unaltered, and I seem to be welded, as it were, into the household chain, I cannot believe that my place is so soon to be vacant. Brain and heart are so full of crowding thoughts and emotions that I marvel how I preserve a composed demeanor. The past, with its tender and hallowed memories; the present, with a wealth of calm, real happiness; the bright, although vague future, alike strive to enchain my mind.
“I long to see you; to have a good, old-fashioned chat, a familiar interchange of our plans and our hopes. There is a sentence in your last that promises much—a promise I shall surely call upon you to redeem when we meet. I would have you feel that by this union you gain, not lose a friend....
“My love to your mother and to ‘Cousin Mag.’ May I not ask from them a sincere ‘God-speed’?
“You will not disappoint me, now, dear one? Write at once that you are all coming. You and Virginia G. will require little preparation—besides the blue skirt and the thin muslin spencer (which you are sure to have!), a pair of white gloves will be all you need.
“This is a hasty and, I fear, an incoherent letter, but a full freight of love goes with it. As I began, I end with ‘Come!’”