At the end of that short hurry-scurrying fortnight, the wedding actually took place; and an advertisement in the Times next morning duly announced among the list of marriages, ‘At Holy Trinity, Brompton, by the Venerable Archdeacon Ord, uncle of the bride, assisted by the Rev. Augustus Savile, B.D., Edward Beresford Hawthorn, M.A., Barrister-at-law, of the Inner Temple, late Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, and District Judge of the Westmoreland District, Trinidad, to Marian Arbuthnot, only daughter of General C. S. Ord, C.I.E., formerly of the Bengal Infantry.’ ‘The bride’s toilet,’ said the newspapers, ‘consisted of white broché satin de Lyon, draped with deep lace flounces, caught up with orange blossoms. The veil was of tulle, secured to the hair with a pearl crescent and stars. The bouquet was composed of rare exotics.’ In fact, to the coarse and undiscriminating male intelligence, the whole attire, on which so much pains and thought had been hurriedly bestowed, does not appear to have differed in any respect whatsoever from that of all the other brides one has ever looked at during the entire course of a reasonably long and varied lifetime.
After the wedding, however, Marian and Edward could only afford a single week by way of a honeymoon, in that most overrun by brides and bridegrooms of all English districts, the Isle of Wight, as being nearest within call of Southampton, whence they had to start on their long ocean voyage. The aunt in charge was to send down Nora to meet them at the hotel the day before the steamer sailed; and the general and Mrs Ord were to see them off, and say a long good-bye to them on the morning of sailing.
Harry Noel, too, who had been best-man at the wedding, for some reason most fully known to himself, professed a vast desire to ‘see the last of poor Hawthorn,’ before he left for parts unknown in the Caribbean; and with that intent, duly presented himself at a Southampton hotel on the day before their final departure. It was not purely by accident, however, either on his own part or on Marian Hawthorn’s, that when they took a quiet walk that evening in some fields behind the battery, he found himself a little in front with Nora Dupuy, while the newly married pair, as was only proper, brought up the rear in a conjugal tête-à-tête.
‘Miss Dupuy,’ Harry said suddenly, as they reached an open space in the fields, with a clear view uninterrupted before them, ‘there’s something I wish to say to you before you leave to-morrow for Trinidad—something a little premature, perhaps, but under the circumstances—as you’re leaving so soon—I can’t delay it. I’ve seen very little of you, as yet, Miss Dupuy, and you’ve seen very little of me, so I daresay I owe you some apology for this strange precipitancy; but—— Well, you’re going away at once from England; and I may not see you again for—for some months; and if I allow you to go without having spoken to you, why’——
Nora’s heart throbbed violently. She didn’t care very much for Harry Noel at first sight, to be sure; but still, she had never till now had a regular offer of marriage made to her; and every woman’s heart beats naturally—I believe—when she finds herself within measurable distance of her first offer. Besides, Harry was the heir to a baronetcy, and a great catch, as most girls counted; and even if you don’t want to marry a baronet, it’s something at least to be able to say to yourself in future, ‘I refused an offer to be Lady Noel.’ Mind you, as women go, the heir to an old baronetcy and twelve thousand a year is not to be despised, though you may not care a single pin about his mere personal attractions. A great many girls who would refuse, the man upon his own merits, would willingly say ‘Yes’ at once to the title and the income. So Nora Dupuy, who was, after all, quite as human as most other girls—if not rather more so—merely held her breath hard and tried her best to still the beating of her wayward heart, as she answered back with childish innocence: ‘Well, Mr Noel; in that case, what would happen?’
‘In that case, Miss Dupuy,’ Harry replied, looking at her pretty little pursed-up guileless mouth with a hungry desire to kiss it incontinently then and there—‘why, in that case, I’m afraid some other man—some handsome young Trinidad planter or other—might carry off the prize on his own account before I had ventured to put in my humble claim for it.—Miss Dupuy, what’s the use of beating about the bush, when I see by your eyes you know what I mean! From the moment I first saw you, I said to myself: “She’s the one woman I have ever seen whom I feel instinctively I could worship for a lifetime.” Answer me yes. I’m no speaker. But I love you. Will you take me?’
Nora twisted the tassel of her parasol nervously between her finger and thumb for a few seconds; then she looked back at him full in the face with her pretty girlish open eyes, and answered with charming naïveté—just as if he had merely asked her whether she would take another cup of tea:—‘Thank you, no, Mr Noel; I don’t think so.’
Harry Noel smiled with amusement—in spite of this curt and simple rejection—at the oddity of such a reply to such a question. ‘Of course,’ he said, glancing down at her pretty little feet to hide his confusion, ‘I didn’t expect you to answer me Yes at once on so very short an acquaintance as ours has been. I acknowledge it’s dreadfully presumptuous in me to have dared to put you a question like that, when I know you can have seen so very little in me to make me worth the honour you’d be bestowing upon me.’
‘Quite so,’ Nora murmured mischievously, in a parenthetical undertone. It wasn’t kind; I daresay it wasn’t even lady-like; but then you see she was really, after all, only a school-girl.
Harry paused, half abashed for a second at this very literal acceptance of his conventional expression of self-depreciation. He hardly knew whether it was worth while continuing his suit in the face of such exceedingly outspoken discouragement. Still, he had something to say, and he determined to say it. He was really very much in love with Nora, and he wasn’t going to lose his chance outright just for the sake of what might be nothing more than a pretty girl’s provoking coyness.