CHAPTER VIII.

It is just a week before the wedding-morning. Aunt Jo and Pauline are

discussing the bill of fare for the breakfast; Addie is lying on a sofa

by the open window, languidly reading the newspaper.

"You have quite made up your mind then, Addie?" asks the elder lady.

"You won't have any one at the ceremony but just our immediate

circle--not even your Aunt and Uncle Beecher?"

"Quite!" answers Addie sharply. "I'll have no one but you and the

boys, Polly and Lottie--not another soul. I'll be married in my

traveling-dress, not in the white _broché_ at all; and no one is to be

let into the church. The doors are to be locked when we have entered."

"It will be a Quakerish kind of festival, certainly," says Pauline

regretfully. "If ever I get married, I'll make a little more noise than

that. And I suppose Mr. Armstrong will have none of his friends or

relatives either?"

"No."

"Heigh-ho! I think you might have let some one in, just to temper the

chill of the first family breaking-up--Teddy Lefroy, for instance. How

he'd stir us up! And I'm sure he'd come, if you'd ask him, Addie."

The newspaper drops from her hands; she turns quickly, with flushed

cheeks.

"Teddy Lefroy? What do you mean, Polly? How could I ask him? He's in

India."

"No, he isn't; he came home about a month ago for a year at the depot.

I heard it when I was at Aunt Selina's, but forgot to tell you until

now."

"Where is he--in England?"

"No, somewhere in Ireland, near Kilkenny. I forget the name of the

place."

"I wonder," says Addie, after a short pause, "if he has heard of my

intended marriage?"

"Can't say, I'm sure," answers Pauline, carelessly. "Oh, yes, though,

I should think the chances are that he has, for there was a pretty

brisk correspondence going on between him and the admiral while I was

at Greystones! You know he's the old gentleman's godson; and I suspect

Master Teddy had been dipping pretty freely and asking assistance,

to judge by the expression of the godpapa's benign countenance while

reading his letters. Poor Teddy, he's a regular Lefroy in that way;

his purse was a perfect sieve. Do you remember, Addie, the presents he

used to bring us from Kelvick--the blue silk handkerchief he brought

you, which Hal upset the pot of blackberry jam over? How mad you were,

to be sure! How you did pinch and cuff the poor child until the tears

ran down his face! It seems but yesterday. Dear Ted, how bright and

bonny he was, to be sure! I wish he'd come and see us while you are

away, Addie; and I wish you were not going in for such a tremendous

honeymoon--a whole month! How shall we get on without you, love? Oh,

dear, I hope you'll miss us awfully! I hope Mr. Armstrong will get

tired of you, and send you home to us before the time is half gone."

Every morning and evening for the rest of that eventful week Addie,

with straining eyes and quickly-beating heart, watches the postman;

but he never brings her what she wants, never brings her a line of

congratulation, renunciation, reproach, or regret from the neighborhood

of Kilkenny.

Her wedding-morning comes cloudless and sunny. She is married

uneventfully, with the quivering rays from the stained-glass windows

erected to the memory of René, Comte le Froi, and his wife Clothilde,

A.D. 1562, bathing her pale emotionless face in purpling

golden light. And then she signs her maiden name--Adelaide Josephine

Lefroy--for the last time on earth.

The breakfast is tearless, but a little strained, remarkable only for

an able and grandiloquent speech from Robert, which is however somewhat

marred at the close by the arrival of a costume from Madame Armine

at the eleventh hour, which entails the reopening of trunks and much

excitement and fuss.

Miss Darcy follows the bride up to her room, where she finds her gazing

blankly out of the window alone. She steals behind her and puts her

arms round her neck.

"Heaven bless you, my child, and give you every joy, every happiness in

the new life that lies before you!"

"Thank you, auntie darling; thank you also for your goodness to me,

and for all you have ever done and suffered for me and mine. I think

I never felt it, never understood it, until now," she adds, breaking

down a little at last. "But I'll never forget--never! You have been the

dearest, the truest friend we have ever had, and one day you will meet

with your reward."

"Not truer, my dear," Miss Darcy answers gravely, "than the friend,

generous, strong, and unselfish, into whose hands Heaven put you but a

few hours ago. You have a good husband, Addie, a truly good husband,

my dear--one whom you can respect, honor, and obey all the days of

your life. I am leaving you in his hands without a shadow of doubt,

a twinge of apprehension. He may not have the outward polish, the

surface-attraction of those born in the purple; but he is nevertheless

a gentleman at heart--a gentleman in the true sense of the word,

liberal, large-minded, incapable of a mean or ignoble act or thought.

You feel that you believe me, don't you, dear, don't you?" she repeats,

peering anxiously into the girl's wistful weary face.

"Yes--oh, yes!" Addie answers in a whisper. "I think I do, auntie, I

think I do."

For during the last month the theory of Mr. Armstrong's motive in

matrimony so unluckily broached by the keen-sighted Robert, and which

had awakened her active contempt, daily lost hold of her mind. She

had but little opportunity of studying his character, or even of

ascertaining the bent of his sympathies and tastes: nevertheless she

was forced to acknowledge to herself that, low-born as he undoubtedly

was, Armstrong of Kelvick was not a snob, that, though he respected

rank and its many attributes of power, he did not love a lord with the

servile fondness of the British tradesman, and that the end and aim of

his existence were not to have the gates of county society flung open

to him--nor was that the motive which had urged him to marry her.

"I could not tell you before, dear," resumes Aunt Jo softly, drawing

her niece to a chair beside her--"but now that you are a wife it is

different--what your husband has done for you and yours. I can not even

now tell you how delicate, how unobtrusively generous, he has been in

all his dealings with our unfortunate affairs."

"I know, I know--at least I half guessed it all."

"I had a long conversation with him last night, Addie, after you had

all gone to bed, and he then told me the arrangements he had made for

the children's futures. Will you listen to them now, or would you

rather hear of them from him?"

"From you, from you!"

"Well, to begin with Robert. He is taking him into his own office to

learn the elements of business; and, though I dare say the dear boy

will be more of a hinderance than assistance there at present, yet he

is giving him a fair salary to start with, and is establishing him

in the household of his head-clerk, a most respectable married man,

where he will have all the comforts of home. Hal he is sending to Dr.

Jellett's at St. Anne's, the best school in the county; and the girls,

who are to live with you, are to have the advantages of first-class

governesses and masters from Kelvick. And that is not all, Addie.

See this piece of crumpled paper he thrust into my hands when he was

going. It is a check for four hundred pounds--half of it to defray

little debts and personal expenses I've been put to in our late stress,

and to help me to start comfortably in my old home; the other half,

Addie, to pay off old bills that we Lefroys have owed in the place for

years--bills of your heartless father's, child--to coach-builders,

wine-merchants, tobacconists, and others, of which he must have heard.

And, oh, Addie, if you had seen how shamefaced and confused he was

when he was trying to explain what he meant, you'd have thought he was

the guilty party, not that other who--who broke my poor sister's heart

before she was thirty, and abandoned you for a--"

Addie moved away quickly, and pressed her hot cheek to the cool pane of

the window, and a sudden light breaks over her clouded sky, showing her

a purpose, an aim with which she can ennoble and sweeten the years of

coming life, make it of value to herself and to others.

"I will be a good wife to him," she whispers warmly. "I will try

to pay him back the debt we owe him. I will brighten his home, and

make it a happy one for him; I will never let him regret the day he

married me and mine; I will be gentle, loving, companionable, always

striving to please; I will curb my awful temper, put a check on my

impetuous tongue. He will never guess, never suspect that I am not

perfectly happy and contented, never know that I don't care for him

as I might have cared for another--another not half as good, as

noble, as generous, or as true as he is. Oh, why can't I--why can't

I? How perverse and hard-hearted I am! But it won't matter; he'll

never know--never! He'll never see me without a smile on my lips and

cheerfulness in my eyes. I'll be a good wife to you, Tom, I will! Oh,

help me, dear Heaven!"