When the ceremony was over Richard shook hands with his brother, and kissed Angela tenderly. Lyddon, also, shook hands with Neville, and then, with a breaking heart, kissed Angela on the forehead for the first time in his life. This, then, was the plucking of this blossom in the flowering time. Richard made no suggestion that Neville should return to the house, but Neville himself, after all, was quite unequal to leaving Harrowby forever without one parting word to his father and mother. They walked to the house, Angela between Richard and Neville, while Mr. Brand, forgotten, lagged behind with Lyddon, who neither saw nor heard him, although they were but a yard apart.
As the two brothers, with the new-made bride, entered the hall, they found Mrs. Tremaine sitting on the sofa in the same spot where Richard had left her. The candles were sputtering, and the pallid light of the early dawn had crept into the silent hall. Colonel Tremaine still sat motionless upon the settee at the landing on the stairs. Neville went up to his mother and without touching her, he, with his whole heart, his eyes, and voice, said: “I could not leave this house without one last farewell to you and my father, and I must once more see the rooms which I shall never see again.”
He turned to go into the drawing-room and Angela went with him. Over the big grand piano hung a portrait of Mrs. Tremaine when she was a little girl of six. “That was the first thing I remember,” Neville said to Angela. “When I was a little boy Mammy Tulip told me that was my mother, and I couldn’t understand that she should ever have been a little child. There is my father’s portrait in his uniform when he came from the Mexican War. I believe it was that picture and my father’s stories of that war that made me a soldier.”
They passed into the library, the room not much used by any except Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine, but where family prayers were always held. Neville smiled a little as he spoke to Angela. “I think all of us have some time or other been rebuked in this room for our inattention to prayers, but I don’t think we were corrected often enough. Mother and father thought themselves strict with us, but they were not half strict enough. I wonder if they will ever again mention me at prayers as they have always done.”
“And so Angela Vaughn became Neville Tremaine’s wife.”
Angela was mute. She understood even better than Neville the depth, the height, and the breadth of the resentment which Neville Tremaine’s course had aroused in the hearts of his mother and father. Then they went into the little shabby study; the ghost-like dawn was peering through the windows. “This place is the spot where I always see you in my imagination,” said Neville, “and in my dreams, for a soldier dreams more than other men, I can tell you. But you are always in my dreams a little girl, in a short, white frock, with a long plait of hair down your back, and very sweet and restless, and a little spoiled, I think.”
Her silence for the first time struck Neville. He was holding her by the hand, and, drawing her toward him, he said: “Are you sorry for what you have done?”
“No,” replied Angela, “I would do it over again, but I am a little stunned, I think. Everything is so strange, so unlike what I thought a marriage would be.”
“Yes, very unlike, but in a little while, I think, I shall contrive a way for you to be with me. Richard will see that you reach me, and then our honeymoon will begin, dearest.”