"Oh, that is all very well," said Alice; "but Aunt Mary says——"
Miss Dale was coming in the evening, and the Miss Hills, and the curate, and the doctor, and various other people, who could not be asked to dinner, to whom it had been carefully explained (which, indeed, was a fact they knew) that to dine twelve people in the little dining-room of the cottage was a feat which was accomplished with difficulty, and that more was impossible. Society at Windyhill was very tolerant and understanding on this point, for all the dining-rooms were small, except, indeed, when you come to talk of such places as Huntingtower—and they were very glad to be permitted to have a peep at the bridegroom on these terms, or rather, if truth were told, of the bride, and how she was bearing herself so near the crisis of her fate. The bridegroom is seldom very interesting on such occasions. On the present occasion he was more interesting than usual, because he was the Honourable Philip, and because he had a reputation of which most people had heard something. There was a mixture of alarm and suspicion in respect to him which increased the excitement; and many remarks of varied kinds were made. "I think the fellow's face quite bears out his character," said the doctor to the Rector. "What a man to trust a nice girl to!" Mr. Hudson felt that as the bridegroom was living under his roof he was partially responsible, and discouraged this pessimistic view. "Mr. Compton has not, perhaps, had all the advantages one tries to secure for one's own son," he said, "but I have reason to believe that the things that have been said of him are much exaggerated." "Oh, advantages!" said the doctor, thinking of Alick, of whom it was his strongly expressed opinion that the fellow should be turned out to rough it, and not coddled up and spoiled at home. But while these remarks were going on, Miss Hill had been expressing to the curate an entirely different view. "I think he has a beautiful face," she said with the emphasis some ladies use; "a little worn, perhaps, with being too much in the world, and I wish he had a better colour. To me he looks delicate: but what delightful features, Mr. Whitebands, and what an aristocratic air!"
"He looks tremendously up to everything," the curate said, with a faint tone of envy in his voice.
"Don't he just?" cried Alick Hudson. "I should think there wasn't a thing he couldn't do—of things that men do do, don't you know," cried that carefully trained boy, whose style was confused, though his meaning was good. But probably there were almost as many opinions about Phil as there were people in the room. His two backers-up stood in a corner—half intimidated, half contemptuous of the country people. "Queer lot for Phil to fall among," said Dick Bolsover. "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?" said Harry Compton, who had been about the world. "Oh, bosh with your French, that nobody understands," said the best man.
But in the meantime Phil was not there at all to be seen of men. He had stolen out into the garden, where there was a white vision awaiting him in the milky moonlight. The autumn haze had come early this season, and the moon was misty, veiled with white amid a jumble of soft floating vapours in the sky. Elinor stood among the flowers, which showed some strange subdued tints of colours in the flooding of the white light, like a bit of consolidated moonlight in her white dress. She had a white shawl covering her from head to foot, with a corner thrown over her hair. What had they to say to each other that last night? Not much; nothing at all that had any information in it—whispers inaudible almost to each other. There was something in being together for this stolen moment, just on the eve of their being together for always, which had a charm of its own. After to-night, no stealing away, no escape to the garden, no little conspiracy to attain a meeting—the last of all those delightful schemings and devices. They started when they heard a sound from the house, and sped along the paths into the shadow like the conspirators they were—but never to conspire more after this last enthralling time.
"You're not frightened, Nell?"
"No—except a little. There is one thing——"
"What is it, my pet? If it's to the half of my kingdom, it shall be done."
"Phil, we are going to be very good when we are together? don't laugh—to help each other?"
He did laugh low, not to be heard, but long. "I shall have no temptation," he said, "to be anything but good, you little goose of a Nell," taking it for a warning of possible jealousy to come.