“I am sorry, Phil, I was so angry with you. I did not think I ever should be again, but you did rouse me so with your cats, and compromising, and all that, after you had asked me to go. But I see you were right. It would not be proper at all, and people would be sure to talk. But you must take Pierre. I should feel safer about you, and can do very well without him. I know the way to Florida, and shall start to-morrow, for if it is improper for me to take care of you in the mountains, it is improper here, now you are so much better; so I am going back to Magnolia Park. But, Phil,” and Queenie’s voice began to tremble, “you’ll come there next winter, won’t you? You, and Ethel, and Grace, and Margery? That will make it quite proper and conventional, and it is so lonely there.”
She was crying by this time, and Phil, who, as she was talking, had stolen his arm around her, drew her down upon his knee and, brushing away her tears, said:
“Yes, darling, if you are in Florida next winter, or next week, I shall be there, too; for in the words of Naomi, ‘Where thou goest I shall go,’ whether to the mountains or to the moon, and, as the mountains suit me best just now, what say you to going there at once?”
“But I thought you said I wasn’t to go—that it would be very disreputable, or some other dreadful word like that? I don’t understand you at all,” Queenie said, hotly, and Phil replied:
“You are an innocent chick, that’s a fact, and cannot see through a millstone. I said that as Queenie Hetherton you must not go scurriping round the world with a yellow-haired chap of the period like me; but as Queenie Rossiter, my wife, you will be a matron sans reproche.”
“Your wife, Phil!” Queenie exclaimed, starting suddenly and trying to free herself from him. But he held her fast, and answered:
“Yes, my wife, and why not? You are bound to be that some time, and why wait any longer? We can be married here to-night or to-morrow, if you please, with Pierre and our landlord for witnesses, and we shall be as firmly tied as if all Merrivale were present at the ceremony. You do not care for bride-maids, and flowers, and flummery. I am sure Anna exhausted all that. And to me you are sweeter and fairer in this black dress, which was put on for me, than you would be in all the white satin robes and laces in the world. Shall it be so, love? Will you marry me to-morrow, and at once start for Tennessee?”
Queenie did not care for satins, or laces or bridal favors, but to be married so suddenly, and in such an informal manner, shocked her at first, and Phil had some little difficulty in getting her consent. But it was won at last. A desire to be with him, to go where he went, and have him to herself, prevailed over every other feeling, and early the next morning, with Pierre, and their landlord, and the sister who had cared for poor Christine as witnesses, Queenie and Phil were married, their wedding a great contrast to what Queenie had thought her wedding would be. But she was very, very happy, and Pierre thought he had never see his young mistress one-half so beautiful as she was in her simple black dress, with only bands of white linen at her throat and wrists, and the brightness of a great happiness in her face and in her brilliant eyes. She was Phil’s at last. The joy she had thought never could be hers had come to her, greater far than she had ever dreamed, and in her happiness all the sad past was forgotten, and she could think of Christine without a pang.
“Next fall we will come here again, and place a tablet at mother’s grave,” she said to Phil, and by the name she gave the dead he knew that the old bitterness was gone, and that Queenie was content.
They took the first train for Brierstone, a quiet, lovely spot among the mountains of Tennessee, where, in the cool, bracing air, Phil felt himself growing stronger every hour, and where the bright color came back to Queenie’s cheeks, and the old sparkle to the eyes which had shed so many bitter tears since the day when the news first came to her of the lover drowned in the Indian waters.