"Ada, mind which opera-box you secure. Let it hold us all."
"Of course you'll be smothered in diamonds," suggested Lady Mary.
"One good thing will come of this wedding, if nothing else does: mamma must get us new things, and plenty of them."
"I wonder whether he will give us any ornaments? He is generous to a fault. Is he not, Adela?"
"How you tease!" was Adela's languid rejoinder. "Go and ask him."
"I protest, Adela, if you show yourself so supremely indifferent he will declare off before the wedding-day."
"And take one of you instead. I wish he would."
"No fear. Ada's chains are bound fast about him. One may see how he loves her."
"Love!" cried Adela. "It is perfectly absurd—from him to me. But it is the way with those plebeians."
The preparations for the wedding were begun. On so magnificent a scale that the fashionable world of London was ringing with them. The bridegroom's liberality, in all that concerned his future wife, could not be surpassed. Settlements, houses, carriages, horses, furniture, ornaments, jewellery, all were perfect of their kind, leaving nothing to be wished for. The Lady Adela had once spoken of Aladdin's lamp, in reference to her sister Grace's ideal union; looking on these real preparations, one might imagine that some magic, equally powerful, was at work now.