CHAPTER IX.
"MRS. LAURENCE."
t was eleven o'clock on the Wednesday morning following that eventful Monday night. In an upper room, a private parlor of a Boston hotel, seated in an easy chair, was Miss Norine Bourdon. They had arrived this morning, and in the hotel book their names were registered "Mr. and Mrs. John Laurence."
At the present moment Miss Bourdon is alone. Her dark face is very pale, her eyelids are red from much weeping; at intervals, as she sits and thinks, the lovely dark eyes fill, the childlike lips quiver, and a sob catches her breath. And yet she is not really very unhappy. Is she not with Laurence? Before another hour passes will she not be his wife? and what is the love of aunt or uncle, what the friendship of a thousand Mr. Gilberts compared to the bliss of that? Truth to tell, the first shock of consternation at her enforced flight over, Norine had found forgiveness easy. She was only seventeen, remember; she was intensely romantic; she loved him with her whole, passionate heart—a heart capable, even at seventeen, of loving, and—who was to tell?—perhaps of hating very strongly. And most girls like bold lovers. It was a very daring coup de main, this carrying her off, quite like something in a last century novel, and with his tender, persuasive voice in her ear, his protecting arm about her waist, with her own heart pleading for him, Norine was driven away a not unwilling captive.
"I have arranged everything, my pet," said Mr. Thorndyke; "rooms are engaged at the W—— House, Boston, and a clerical friend of mine is to perform the ceremony very much on the quiet. You don't object to being married in a hotel parlor, and by a Congregationalist minister, do you? By-and-by we'll take a run over the border and have the thing done over again in the sacred precincts of Notre Dame de Montreal, if you like. Just at present everything must be sub rosa, my darling. The old boy—I mean my respected uncle Darcy—will cut up deuced rough, you know, when he first comes to hear it. He expects me to marry his pet, Nellie Holmes; so does Miss Nellie, if the truth must be told. So I would have done, too, if fate and a broken limb had not thrown me upon your protection. And from that hour, my darling, my fate was sealed. Of all the eyes, blue, black, brown, green, or gray, for killing, wholesale slaughter, commend me to those of a fair Canadian. So you see, Norry, we will be married Wednesday morning nicely on the quiet, and we'll go to a place I've engaged, over Chelsea way, down by the 'sad sea waves,' to spend the honeymoon. And there for one blessed month we'll forget all the uncles and aunts, all the lawyers and heiresses in Christendom, and 'do' love among the roses. You forgive me for carrying you off in this right knightly fashion—you do, don't you, Norry? Ah! I know you do; but look up, my own love, and tell me so, and so make my happiness complete."
With a little fluttering sigh Norine obeyed, clinging close to her hero's side in the darkness.