“Never you min’, chile,” she cried. “Ef yo’ mar ain’t gwine to speak to you no mo’, yo’ mammy lub you jes’ de same, honey. ’Tain’t gwine to make a bit o’ diffunce cuz you is in de Yankee army, yo’ mammy will tek car’ o’ Miss Angela fur you, an’ I gwine to knit you some socks an’ sen’ you. Yo’ ole mammy ain’t gwine furgit you.”
“Thank you, mammy,” Neville answered, putting his arm around her neck. “Now you can do one thing for me at this moment. Go upstairs and help Angela to make ready for our wedding.”
Angela had sped up the stairs and was in her own large room with its great curtained bed. She was to dress for her wedding, but how strange was everything. She threw off her crimson mantle and sitting down before her dressing table began to comb out her long, thick hair. There was occasion for haste; she should spend every moment possible with Neville, but her mind as well as her body seemed dull and nerveless. As she sat helpless before her mirror, Mammy Tulip waddled in.
“I come to he’p dress you, honey,” she said. “Marse Neville, he sont me. What you gwine git married in, chile?”
Angela looked at her with eyes which saw nothing. She had thought only of Neville. But youth is never for long self-forgetful, and a great shock of pity for herself came upon her. Her quick imagination pictured to herself what should have been the scene of that greatest hour in a woman’s life. She saw herself in her bridal array, with a filmy veil falling around her and a group of rosebud bridesmaids attending her, and all things irradiated with joy and peace; the sound of wedding merriment in the old house, felicitations on every lip, sympathy in every heart, and now how bleak, how drear, how tragic was this wedding! She arranged her hair, scarcely knowing what she was doing, and submitted to have Mammy Tulip put on her a white gown and to throw a white scarf over her head; then carrying her red mantle over her arm, followed by Mammy Tulip, in lieu of a train of maids, she went down the broad stair.
Colonel Tremaine still sat on the settee upon the landing. Whether his heart would not let him lose the last view of his eldest-born or the strange weakness, which had overcome him, would not permit him to move, Angela could not tell. Archie, with a frightened face, still sat by him. Angela stopped in front of him for a moment. She had never looked into his face before without seeing kindness there, but now all was sternness. She began to weep a little. Colonel Tremaine turned his head away. To see a woman’s tears always gave him exquisite pain, but it could not alter his resolution.
Presently Angela spoke: “Won’t you come and see us married, Neville and me?”
“No,” answered Colonel Tremaine, in a voice that admitted of no appeal.
Angela went downstairs. Whether Mrs. Tremaine would have yielded Angela did not know, but Colonel Tremaine’s refusal had frightened her. She stopped before Mrs. Tremaine, and the two women eyed each other with somber but uncertain eyes. Then Angela passed on and went out of the small door in the corridor by the study.
Outside Neville was standing. He took the mantle from her arm and placed it around her, “Come,” he said, “we shall have an hour to wait until Richard returns. We need not ask the hospitality even of the Harrowby lawn or garden. We can sit in the boat; the river, at least, is a highway free to all.”