“To be sure,” he answered. “He would consider me a heathen, looking at me theologically, but that’s no matter.”
Muriel looked at his smiling countenance, and shook her finger at him.
“Oh, you Verulamian heretic!” she exclaimed, gaily.
“Well, Muriel,” laughed Emily, “I’m sure you’re very obliging to have even Mr. Parker. With your invincible hostility to Madame la Grundy, it is positively a remarkable concession.”
“Ah, dear Emily,” replied Muriel, smiling tenderly, “can the words of a clergyman make more holy the union of lovers, who love in spirit and in truth! Were Mr. Parker not in the world, and were we in Pennsylvania to-day, and not in Massachusetts, I would rather choose to stand up with John before our friends, avowing our love in the sweet and beautiful old simple Quaker fashion, and sparing every other rite beside. To have the spiritual marriage publicly recognized would be enough. But then,” she added, with gentle gaiety, “on this point, Mrs. Grundy has the law on her side, so I curtsey and submit, hoping to atone for the submission by a long series of flagrant rebellions, against which there is no statute! For while it is both proper and necessary, as things stand, that Mrs. Grundy should be obeyed, it is also proper and necessary as things stand, that the dear old woman should be defied. So there’s a paradox for you!”
“Bravo!” cried Wentworth. “Centripetality and centrifugality for ever!”
“Exactly so,” replied Muriel, with a frolic curtsey. “Now, mother, there you sit without saying a word, and you haven’t told me yet whether you are going to lend the light of your countenance to my extraordinary proceedings.”
“Of course I am, dear,” cried Mrs. Eastman, starting up to kiss her bewitching daughter, while they all rippled off into lively talk and the hilarity of the immortals.
“Come,” said Muriel in a few moments, “let us have music till Mr. Parker comes. Gluck and Mendelssohn and the divine Mozart and Beethoven, shall speak for us to-day. Color and fragrance, and dancing, and silence can express deep joy, but music expresses it as nothing else can, and to-day is the flower of my existence.”