Page:The Small House at Allington Vol 2.djvu/338

314 The marriage went off very nicely. The squire was upon his very best behaviour, and welcomed his guests as though he really enjoyed their presence there in his halls. Hopkins, who was quite aware that he had been triumphant, decorated the old rooms with mingled flowers and greenery with an assiduous care which pleased the two girls mightily. And during this work of wreathing and decking there was one little morsel of feeling displayed which may as well be told in these last lines. Lily had been encouraging the old man while Bell for a moment had been absent.

"I wish it had been for thee, my darling!" he said; "I wish it had been for thee!"

"It is much better as it is, Hopkins," she answered, solemnly.

"Not with him, though," he went on, "not with him. I wouldn't a hung a bough for him. But with t'other one."

Lily said no word further. She knew that the man was expressing the wishes of all around her. She said no word further, and then Bell returned to them.

But no one at the wedding was so gay as Lily,—so gay, so bright, and so wedding-like. She flirted with the old earl till he declared that he would marry her himself. No one seeing her that evening, and knowing nothing of her immediate history, would have imagined that she herself had been cruelly jilted some six or eight months ago. And those who did know her could not imagine that what she then suffered had hit her so hard, that no recovery seemed possible for her. But though no recovery, as she herself believed, was possible for her,—though she was as a man whose right arm had been taken from him in the battle, still all the world had not gone with that right arm. The bullet which had maimed her sorely had not touched her life, and she scorned to go about the world complaining either by word or look of the injury she had received. "Wives when they have lost their husbands still eat and laugh," she said to herself, "and he is not dead like that." So she resolved that she would be happy, and I here declare that she not only seemed to carry out her resolution, but that she did carry it out in very truth. "You're a dear good man, and I know you'll be good to her," she said to Crofts just as he was about to start with his bride.

"I'll try, at any rate," he answered.

"And I shall expect you to be good to me too. Remember you have married the whole family; and, sir, you mustn't believe a word of what that bad man says in his novels about mothers-in-law. He