“Oh no! how can it? I am too young yet to marry.”
“My dear, in a case like this the bride’s youth counts for nothing, and the bridegroom’s age carries all other considerations before it. Your father also agrees that it is best to make immediate arrangements, and there is really no reason why you should not be married next week.”
And somehow it was all decided, almost without referring again to me, that on the following Wednesday I should be transformed into the Countess of Greatlands. I have no doubt that society partially echoed Belle’s sneers and voted the earl half crazy. But if it did, its criticisms did not trouble me, and I was supremely happy as I reveled in the lavish preparations that were being made for the great event. Belle’s wedding was indefinitely postponed, although it had at first been spoken of as an almost immediate event.
So far as I could judge, Lord Egreville was as bitterly opposed to the earl’s wedding as Belle was. He was just distantly civil to me, and I took no trouble to ingratiate myself with him. Sometimes, when the couple sat whispering in a corner, I surprised an occasional glance that was positively malignant in its intensity of hatred. Once or twice I remembered my sister’s assertion that she would prevent my marriage, and wondered vaguely if she were really hatching some plot against me. Then a certainty that it was out of her power to harm me consoled me once more, and I pursued the happy tenor of my way, all my time occupied either by the earl’s visits or by my initiation into further gayeties of attire.
The wedding itself was to be a very quiet affair, and as soon as it was over my husband was going to take me into Derbyshire for a week. Then we were to go to the castle, which was being rapidly prepared for my reception.
And so the time flew on, until Tuesday came round once more. To-morrow was to be my wedding day.
To-morrow! Oh, that dreadful to-morrow! Shall I ever forget it as long as I live?
CHAPTER IV.
“There will be no wedding to-day.”
That night I went to bed hoping to the last that Belle would relent and say a kindly word to me. For after all, she was the only sister I had, and I would have been thankful to have been reconciled with her. But she was as implacable as ever, and never uttered one kindly word to me amid all the congratulations of others; although Lady Elizabeth had, I know, remonstrated with her on her unsisterly behavior. My father did not care to interfere in the matter, especially as his sympathies were all in favor of his eldest daughter.