He dashed off and posted answers to the letters at once, making violent protest against a scheme that seemed to him positively iniquitous and pleading with "Muddie" to keep Virginia for him. But writing was not enough. He determined to answer in person.
A day or two later Virginia and her mother were in the act of discussing his letters, which had just come, when the sitting-room door quietly opened, and there stood the man who was all the world to them!
Virginia, with a scream of delight, was in his arms in a flash and began telling him, breathlessly, what a fright she had been in for fear "Cousin Neilson" would take her away and she would never see him again.
With a rising tide of tenderness for her and rage against their cousin, he kissed the trouble from her eyes.
"Don't be afraid, sweetheart," he murmured, "He shall never take you from me. I have come back to marry you!"
"To marry her?" exclaimed Mrs. Clemm. "At once, do you mean?"
"At once! Today or tomorrow—for I must be getting back to Richmond as soon as possible. Don't you see, Muddie, that this is just a plot of Neilson's to separate us? He never cared for me—he loves Virginia and is determined I shall not have her. But we'll outwit him! We'll be married at once. We'll have to keep it secret at first—until I am able to provide a home for my little wife and our dear mother in Richmond, but I will go away with peace of mind and leave her in peace of mind, for once she is mine only death can come between us. We will keep it secret dear," he added, with his lips on the dusky hair of the little maid who was still held fast in his arms. "We will keep it secret, but if Neilson Poe becomes troublesome you will only have to show him your marriage certificate."
Virginia joyfully agreed to this plan, while the widow, finding opposition useless, finally consented too—and the impetuous lover was off post-haste for a license.
It was a unique little wedding which took place next day in Christ Church, when a beautiful, dreamy looking youth, with intellectual brow and classic profile and a beautiful, dreamy-looking maid, half his age, plighted their troth. The only attendant was Mother Clemm in her habitual plain black dress and widow's cap, with floating cap-strings, sheer and snowy white. No music, no flowers, no witnesses even, save the widowed mother and the aged sexton who was bound over to strict secrecy.
But in the dim, still, empty church the beautiful words of the old, old rite seemed to this strange pair of lovers to take on new solemnity as they fell from the lips of the white robed priest and sank deep into their young hearts, filling and thrilling them with fresh hope and faith and love and high resolve.