“But your brother and Mr. Salmon?” put in Enid, with hesitation. “Don’t you think they will receive the news with anger?”
“Herbert will not; he is too sensible,” replied the girl, readily. “But about David I cannot say. However, I trust he will take it in the right light. I really cannot see that my religion need make any difference to him.”
But Enid was not so sanguine; she knew that David Salmon possessed a lofty contempt for everything pertaining to matters spiritual.
“I hope he will be nice about it,” she said doubtfully. “But—I can’t help wishing that you were going to marry a Christian, Celia dear.”
And in his heart her brother re-echoed her wish.
CHAPTER VII
WHITE HEATHER
“I believe I must be losing my youth, Janet,” Lady Marjorie said half seriously. “This is the third grey hair I have found this week.”
She took up a silver-mounted hand-glass from the dressing-table and surveyed herself critically. The suspicion of a wrinkle lined her forehead; but her mouth was still as mobile, and her eyes as bright as ever they had been. The old servant carefully removed the offending hair, and went on arranging her mistress’s tresses. She had nursed Lady Marjorie as a baby, as well as Lady Marjorie’s boy, and knew the Bexley family almost as well as her own.
“Losing your youth indeed!” she exclaimed, inserting the last hairpin in its place. “Why, you are not nearly thirty yet, my lady, and as young-looking as can be.”
“Am I?” The young widow smiled. “I feel young, it is true; but I am twenty-eight to-day, Janet, and it will soon be ten years since my wedding-day. It doesn’t seem like ten years, does it, since we drove up to that great cold church in Mayfair? Do you remember how nervous I was, and how I shivered? But I was so young—only just out of the schoolroom; and poor Mr. Stonor was thirty; he seemed dreadfully old to me then. Do you remember, too, how my sister Olive pitied me for having to stand before the altar with a man with mutton-chop whiskers? Poor Denis! he retained those mutton-chop whiskers to the last.”