She was not aware that it was improper to use vulgar pronouns in speaking of the greatest lady in the land.
Lady William made no reply. She was thinking of the long life of self-indulgence, of luxury and pleasure, a life in which no wish had been allowed to remain unfulfilled, of the woman who had sentenced herself in her youth, remorselessly, to a horrible fate—to deception and undeception, one more dreadful than the other—in order to save her own reputation: and then had turned upon her and endeavoured to ruin her for having been thus deceived. Mrs. Swinford had suffered little outwardly for all those indulgences which she had insisted upon securing for herself, and for all the wrong she had done to others. But here, at last, her lovers, her victims, her husband whom she had deceived, her friend whom she had sacrificed, were avenged. By what?—by the Lord Chamberlain’s wand across that doorway forbidding entrance to one of the most tiresome ceremonials in the world.
‘Poor old woman!’ Lady William said.
‘I don’t know who is the poor old woman,’ said Mab, ‘nor what she has done; but it’s grand of the Queen, if she is a wicked old woman, not to let her in. So, say poor woman as much as you like, mother; I approve of the Queen.’
‘I hope Her Majesty may be duly grateful, Mab,’ her mother replied.
I will not say that Mr. Francis Osborne’s family were quite satisfied that he had done as well for himself as he ought by marrying his Rector’s daughter. With his connections and prospects he might, as they said, have married anybody. But, at the same time, for a curate to marry his Rector’s daughter is a thing that is always on the cards, and the Plowdens in their way were unexceptionable; and then there was that connection with the Portcullis family, which was always something. So the Osbornes and the kindred in general exerted themselves, as they had always intended to do on fit occasion, and provided the living which was always understood to be waiting until Francis should have gained a little experience. There was the prettiest wedding in Watcham Church, which became a bower of flowers, all the old lines of its arches and pillars traced out with lilies and roses, and the dim building made bright with a festal company of old and young, which filled it as if for an Easter or a Christmas service. The procession walked from the Rectory through the little private gate to the church, with all Watcham looking on outside the hedge of the garden. Fortunately, it was very dry as well as bright, and the most delicate dresses got no harm, and the sight afforded the truest gratification to all the parishioners, great and small. When Florence had changed her wedding robes for the pretty gray gown in which she was to travel, she lingered in the old room which she had shared for nearly all her life with her sister, and kissed her inseparable Emmy with a few tears.
‘If it had not been me, it would have been you,’ Florry said. ‘One of us was bound to go the first. And it will soon be your turn, too.’
‘No,’ said Emmy, ‘I do not think I shall ever marry.’
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ Florence said. ‘He has kept beside you all day.’
Emmy disengaged herself from her sister with a gravity beyond description.