“So, you are going from this evil house, Lady Bell, before its fate fall upon you,” said Mrs. Die.
It was the gentlest speech she had ever made to her niece, but it was spoken not so much in remorse, or in atonement, or in faint congratulation, as in a certain dreary sense that a presence, strange for many a day, which she had not prized while she had it, that had come and abode for a season at St. Bevis’s, was going from it for ever. It was the presence of youth, simplicity, hope, a heart ungnawed as yet with passion, which might have made the vacant, haunted place less doleful.
Mrs. Kitty hastened to interpose with a parting sneer. “Sure Lady Bell will never remember such unfortunate, stay-at-home folks as we are at St. Bevis’s, when she is a young married madam, gadding abroad with her gay bridegroom.”
These were the gibes which Lady Bell heard, instead of the flattering assurances and fond prognostications which are wont to wait on brides.
She was married in her hat and habit, as she had come to St. Bevis’s, because there was to be no marriage feast, inadmissible in the circumstances, and she had to start with Squire Trevor immediately after the ceremony.
The special licence had been procured, and Mr. Greenwood had only to don his cassock, to marry Lady Bell in Mrs. Die’s parlour.
It was the disreputable merry-andrew and scapegrace of a chaplain who held her by the hand for a moment at parting, and said seriously and from his heart, “May every happiness and prosperity attend you, Lady Bell.”
“Thank you, sir,” she answered him quietly and gravely, “and I have to thank you also for all the kindness which you have shown me since I came here, and to ask you to forgive me if I have ever offended you. Will you say the same from me to Sneyd, in case I should not get it said to him?”
She spoke it so prettily, and so like some poor young Lady Jane Grey on her way to the block, as Mr. Greenwood confided to his crony Sneyd afterwards, that the tears started to his eyes, and he was forced to retire and not see her ride away, because he could not have stood it without blubbering; and what would the squire have said to such an exhibition?