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 CHAPTER XLIV

It was a pretty wedding, and very simple. The Lees were simple English gentlefolk.

It was a quiet ceremony, quietly performed. There was but little music; no fife, no drum, no clang. The old organist played softly. (Neither he nor Mrs. Gregory gave a thought to who had given the instrument; and no one else there had ever known.) No incense burned. The English sunshine, perfumed by the roses that grew about the village graves, drifted softly through the old church windows and dappled on the chancel floor and on the altar rails and on the organ's pipes. And the holy place was sweet with quiet harmony.

Even Robert Gregory, spruce and straight, wearing the whitest pair of gloves, and almost tightest into which human hands were ever packed, was content. He was glad to see Basil settled. The girl had no "dot," but she was pretty enough to eat; and his manliness was of a straight, sturdy stuff, and held that a man should earn and provide for his wife, by the Lord Harry, every time. And for once he was satisfied again with Mrs. Gregory's appearance. She looked fine in her gray and gold, and the emeralds at her breast and pinning the scrap of bonnet on her white curls were some style.

Hilda listened to the old service with a rapt, tender face. John Bradley was coming home for six months of holiday next week. She had no doubt that he'd come to see her mother.