“I shall never see Mary again, all the same.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, but I am certain she will never come here. Arthur, I think she dislikes Laurence too much ever to come here.”
Arthur opened his eyes.
“Dislikes Laurence!” he repeated. “Why should she?”
“She does,” persisted Alys, “and Laurence knows it.”
“Well, we’ll see. Perhaps Lilias may help us to overcome Mary’s prejudice,” said Arthur, with a smile. “And failing Mary, Alys, you won’t be sorry to have Lilias for—for a sister—will you, Alys?”
Alys smiled, and her smile was enough.
All this happened in spring. Early in the autumn of that same year Lilias and Arthur were married. They were married at Hathercourt—in the old church which had seen the bride grow up from a child into a woman, and had been associated with all the joys and sorrows of her life—the old church beneath whose walls had lain for many long years the mortal remains of Arthur Beverley’s far-back ancestress, the “Mawde” who had once been a fair young bride herself.
“As fair perhaps, as happy and hopeful as Lilias,” thought Mary, as her eyes once more wandered to the well-known tablet on the wall, with a vague wonder as to what “Mawde” would think of it all could she see the group now standing before the altar. Then there came before her memory, like a dream, the thought of the Sunday morning, not, after all, so very long ago, when the little party of strangers had invaded the quiet church, and so disturbed her own and her sister’s devotions. And again she seemed to see herself looking up into Mr Cheviott’s face in the porch, while she asked him to come into the Rectory to rest.