And so one day in the early spring, when the violets and crocuses were growing on Emmie's grave, there was a quiet wedding at Carlisle, and Queenie became Garth Clayton's wife.
It was a very quiet wedding, only Langley and Cathy and Ted were there, and Mr. Logan came over to marry them. She had worn bridal-white, but after the ceremony she had resumed her mourning.
"Garth did not mind," she said, "and she was unwilling to put it off unless he wished it."
Garth was too perfectly happy to find fault with anything. A holiday was a rare thing with him, and he and Queenie had planned it to the best advantage, in a tour through Normandy. Queenie had never been abroad, and Garth had only once left England. The change of scene would be good for both of them.
When May was over they came back to Hepshaw, and settled down quietly, "as sober married people," Garth would say, with a proud look at his young wife.
It was a happy household at Church-Stile House. Queenie's good sense and sweetness of temper averted even the ordinary jars that are liable to occur in the most united family. In her husband's eyes she was simply faultless.
"Where is my wife?" was always his first question if she were not in the porch to meet him. "My wife"—he seemed never weary of saying it.
"How can you spoil any man so, Mrs. Clayton," Dora said to her once, on one of her rare visits to Church-Stile House.
Garth had taken his wife more than once to Crossgill Vicarage, but Dora's ponies seldom drove now through the Hepshaw lanes. "Beatrix was going to be married, and she was so busy." There was always some excuse; but she was quite pleasant and friendly to Queenie when they met, though there was no special sympathy between them. But Queenie could never rid herself of a secret feeling of embarrassment in Dora's presence. That conversation lay as a barrier between them; she even felt a little self-reproach when Garth once hinted that Dora looked older and more worn than she used to look. Was it possible that she had really cared for him so much after all?
If she had she kept her secret well and fulfilled all her duties admirably. She married both her sisters, becoming the most inveterate match-maker for their sakes; and she soothed her father's declining years with the utmost dutifulness.