“Well, I don’t sort o’ take to ’im neither,” Mrs. Gullick observed, sympathizing with the bride’s feeling. “I do hope he’ll be kind to the pore young thing; that I do.”
“She wouldn’t never give it ’im back; she’s that good,” another woman remarked.
“Who’s the gentleman as she had set her heart on?” a romantic young woman enquired.
“Oh, it’s only wot they say,” said Dodge judicially; “it’s no use a listening to all one hears—not by a long way.”
“You ’ad it from Lord Engleton’s coachman, didn’t you?” prompted Mrs. Gullick.
“Which he heard it said by the gardener at Mr. Jordan’s, as Miss Marion was always about with Mr. Fleming.”
The murmur of interest at this announcement was drowned by the sound of carriage wheels. The bride had come.
“See the ideal and ethereal being whom you have been so faithfully impersonating all the afternoon!” exclaimed Hadria.
A fair, faint, admirably gentle creature, floating in a mist of tulle, was wafted out of the brougham, the spring sunshine burnishing the pale hair, and flashing a dazzling sword-like glance on the string of diamonds at her throat.
It seemed too emphatic, too keen a greeting for the faint ambiguous being, about to put the teaching of her girlhood, and her pretty hopes and faiths, to the test.