"It shall be Eliot, then, always," answered the little bride.
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
Bryant Van Zandt was as much surprised and displeased as his brother had expected on the reception of the letter announcing his marriage.
"Eliot had no right to do it. He promised our mother, before she died, to stay single and care for the girls until they had homes of their own!" he exclaimed, vexedly, to his wife, to whom he imparted the shocking news before breaking it to his sisters.
Mrs. Van Zandt was a blonde of the very palest type.
"Her skin it was milk-white,
Her hair it was lint-white,
Bright was the blue of her soft rolling eye."
She was about twenty-eight, but looked younger through her fairness. She was rather pretty and petite, and, in her tasteful garb of blue and white, looked like an animated bisque doll.
But her color took a warmer tint than usual just now, and frowning darkly, she exclaimed:
"It was a shame for Eliot to go and make such a goose of himself. It would not have been so bad if he had married a girl with money, as you did, but to go and add another burden to the family is outrageous, I declare! What ever will the girls say?"