own journey to Captain Lennox, who assented,
as in duty bound, to all his future mother-in-
law said, while his eyes sought Edith, who was
busying herself in re-arranging the tea-table,
and ordering up all sorts of good things, in
spite of his assurances that he had dined
within the last two hours.

Mr. Henry Lennox stood leaning against
the chimney-piece, amused with the family
scene. He was close by his handsome
brother; he was the plain one in a singularly
good-looking family; but his face was
intelligent, keen, and mobile; and now and then
Margaret wondered what it was that he
could be thinking about while he kept
silence, but was evidently observing, with an
interest that was slightly sarcastic, all that
Edith and she were doing. The sarcastic
feeling was called out by Mrs. Shaw's
conversation with his brother; it was separate
from the interest which was excited by what
he saw. He thought it a pretty sight to see
the two cousins so busy in their little arrangements
about the table. Edith chose to do
most herself. She was in a humour to enjoy
showing her lover how well she could behave
as a soldier's wife. She found out that the
water in the urn was cold, and ordered up
the great kitchen tea-kettle; the only
consequence of which was that when she met it
at the door, and tried to carry it in, it was too
heavy for her, and she came in pouting, with
a black mark on her muslin gown, and a little
round white hand indented by the handle,
which she took to show to Captain Lennox, just
like a hurt child, and, of course, the remedy
was the same in both cases. Margaret's
quickly-adjusted spirit-lamp was the most
efficacious contrivance, though not so like the
gipsy-encampment which Edith, in some of
her moods, chose to consider the nearest
resemblance to a barrack-life.

After this evening all was bustle till the
wedding was over.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

MARGARET was once more in her morning
dress, travelling quietly home with her
father, who had come up to assist at
the wedding. Her mother had been
detained at home by a multitude of half-reasons,
none of which anybody fully understood,
except Mr. Hale, who was perfectly aware
that all his arguments in favour of a gray-
satin gown, which was midway between
oldness and newness, had proved unavailing;
and that, as he had not the money to equip
his wife afresh, from top to toe, she would not
show herself at her only sister's only child's
wedding. If Mrs. Shaw had guessed at the
real reason why Mrs. Hale did not accompany
her husband, she would have showered down
gowns upon her; but it was nearly twenty
years since Mrs. Shaw had been the poor,
pretty, Miss Beresford, and she had really
forgotten all grievances except that of the
unhappiness arising from disparity of age in
married life, on which she could descant by
the half-hour. Dearest Maria had married
the man of her heart, only eight years older
than herself, with the sweetest temper, and
that blue-black hair one so seldom sees. Mr.
Hale was one of the most delightful preachers
she had ever heard, and a perfect model of a
parish priest. Perhaps it was not quite a
logical deduction from all these premises, but
it was still Mrs. Shaw's characteristic conclusion,
as she thought over her sister's lot:
"Married for love, what can dearest Maria
have to wish for in this world?" Mrs. Hale,
if she spoke truth, might have answered with
a ready-made list, "a silver-grey glacé silk, a
white chip bonnet, oh! dozens of things for the
wedding,and hundreds of things for the house."
Margaret only knew that her mother had
not found it convenient to come, and she was
not sorry to think that their meeting and
greeting would take place at Helstone
parsonage, rather than, in the confusion of the
last two or three days, in the house in Harley
Street, where she herself had had to play the
part of Figaro, and was wanted everywhere at
one and the same time. Her mind and body
ached now with the recollection of all she had
done and said within the last forty-eight
hours. The farewells so hurriedly taken,
amongst all the other good-byes, of those she
had lived with so long, oppressed her now
with a sad regret for the times that were no
more; it did not signify what those times had
been, they were gone never to return.
Margaret's heart felt more heavy than she could
ever have thought it possible in going to her
own dear home, the place and the life she had
longed for for years—at that time of all times
for yearning and longing, just before the
sharp senses lose their outlines in sleep. She
took her mind away with a wrench from the
recollection of the past, to the bright serene
contemplation of the hopeful future. Her eyes
began to see, not visions of what had been,
but the sight actually before her; her dear
father leaning back asleep in the railway
carriage. His blue-black hair was gray now, and
lay thinly over his brows. The bones of his
face were plainly to be seen—too plainly for
beauty—if his features had been less finely
cut; as it was, they had a grace if not a
comeliness of their own. The face was in repose;
but it was rather rest after weariness, than
the serene calm of the countenance of one who
led a placid, contented life. Margaret was
painfully struck by the worn, anxious expression;
and she went back over the open and
avowed circumstances of her father's life, to find
the cause for the lines that spoke so plainly of
habitual distress and depression.

"Poor Frederick!" thought she, sighing.
"Oh! if Frederick had but been a clergyman,
instead of going into the navy, and being lost
to us all! I wish I knew all about it. I never
understood it from aunt Shaw; I only knew
he could not come back to England
because of that terrible affair. Poor dear papa!