“Bravo!” cried Wentworth. “An amicable adjustment of a serious difficulty. And now, what next?”
“Next, music,” laughingly said Emily, moving to the organ.
Her rich contralto voice rose with the instrumental surge into a trumpet pæan, and so, amidst music and laughter, and many-colored festal talk, the golden banquet of the day passed by, and as they stood together at the single western window of the library, the evening overspread them with a sky of deepest azure, filled with vast clouds of purple and amber flame, like the wings of seraphim.
Slowly the burning magnificence of the celestial pageant faded from the sky, and the enchanted twilight came with soft and odorous southwind breathings. All the long evening, in the dim bloom of moonlight, too faint to veil the brightness of the stars, the long wafts of balmy odor hung swaying with the airy poise of spirits around the dwelling, rising in low whisperings, and slowly swooning away in sweetness. Gradually the sounds of life died away, the moon sank low, the shadows slept within the street, and the silence was unbroken save by the passionate whispers of the fragrant wind. Ear above the dark roofs, the bright stars were throbbing in the divine blue gloom, and over the vast night brooded the infinite presence of the triune Love and Life and Joy.
CHAPTER XXV.
WITHERLEE.
The next day the announcement of the marriage appeared in the newspapers, and falling soft as a rose-leaf on the tail of that great Chicken Little, Society, Society ran round clucking as if the sky had fallen. Great was the sensation—especially among the score or so of lovers who for a long time had been vainly endeavoring to get sufficiently intimate with Muriel to make their love manifest, and whose fate was now sealed.
Not having been invited to the wedding, Society expected the cards to arrive inviting it to the conventional reception. But Society hearing presently, through some intimate friends of the family, that Muriel and her husband had decided to dispense with conventionalities, took it kindly, as just what might have been expected of that lady, and began to pour in a stream of congratulatory callers at the house in Temple street. Among the callers, the startled and enraged Atkinses were missing, which was melancholy. Amidst the family wrath, Horatio kept contemptuously cool, remarking, like the fine young American he was, that a social mesalliance always brought its own punishment, as she (Muriel) would find to her sorrow; while Thomas, on all occasions, when the subject of the marriage came up in conversation, observed, that that’s what comes of letting girls have too much head, be Jove!
Great was the sensation the next morning when Muriel and Harrington appeared at Captain Fisher’s, announcing their espousals, and great was the joy, and immense the satisfaction.