CHAPTER XIII
Margaret was living in an earthly paradise. Existence, indeed, was more like a beautiful dream to her than the gray and sober reality it is to most of us.
To be loved is a nice thing, a grand thing, a fact which gilds even the most prosaic life and makes it bright; but to be loved by such a man as Lord Blair – so handsome, so brave, so devoted, and so passionately and entirely hers! It passed all saying, as the Italians put it; and Margaret's days were full of sweetness and joy; for if he did not see her every day, he managed to come down three or four times a week, and they met in stolen interviews at the cascade, or in the deeper recesses of the woods.
And Blair – Blair, who had gained for himself the reputation of the most fickle young man in London – seemed more deeply in love every time they parted.
If Margaret had been the scheming girl, aiming at the Ferrers' coronet, which Austin Ambrose at first imagined her, she could not have gone more cleverly to work to secure Lord Blair Leyton.
Once or twice he had brought her down some presents, a ring at first, a bracelet the next time, but Margaret would not accept them.
"I will take nothing I cannot wear, Blair," she said. "Pick this bunch of honeysuckle for me, and I will put it in my hair; I like that better than all your jewels."
But the third time he brought her a locket. Its face was a mass of pearls, with one large and costly diamond sparkling in the center.
"You can wear this, dearest," he said pleadingly.
"Yes, I can wear that," she said in the soft, melting voice, which used to echo in his ears long after he had left her and was up in town. "I can wear that," and she tied it by her ribbon round her neck and hid it away in her bosom. "No one can see that, and I can take it out – "
"Off?" he said.
"No, sir," she corrected him, blushing; "I shall not take it off again, but I shall take it out whenever I am likely to forget you."
"Don't say that, even in fun, Madge," he said in a low voice, and with a sudden look of pain. "I can't bear to think of you forgetting me. Why, if I were dead, and you were walking near my grave – " he stopped; and she murmured the well-known song:
"Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red."
"That's it!" he said, approvingly and admiringly. "What a memory you have got, Madge. Is it Shakespeare?"
"No; Tennyson," and she smiled. "What an ignorant boy it is!"
"Ain't I?" he said, with a laugh. "Austin often says that the things I know would go into half a sheet of note-paper, and the things I don't would more than fill the reading-room at the British Museum. But one thing I know, Madge, and that is that I love you with all my heart and soul."
"I'll forgive you all the rest!" she murmured.
She was painting the picture the earl had commissioned, and she took up her brush and palette and worked, while Blair sat at her side, watching her with an admiring wonder, as the skillful hand conveyed the little bushy dell to the canvas.
"What a fuss they'll make about you when we are married," he said, after a pause.
Margaret bent forward to hide the blush which the words had called up.
"Who are they? And why should they make a fuss?" she asked.
"They? Oh, all the people, you know. They'll make no end of you, Madge. You see, you are so good-looking – "
She threatened him with her wet brush.
– "And then you are so clever, and this painting of yours will just finish them off. I shouldn't wonder if you are the leading item in the next season."
"The next season!" echoed Margaret, turning her eyes upon him.
He colored and looked rather guilty; then he raised his eyes to hers boldly.
"Yes, next season. You are going to marry me soon, you know, Madge!"
"Soon?" she repeated dreamily. "Two years, five years hence will be soon."
"Oh, will it?" he remarked, aghast. "Why, Madge, Austin says we ought to be married next month."
Margaret almost dropped her pencil, and stared at him; then her eyelids fell, and the warm color spread over her face and neck.
"And yet you are always boasting that Austin Ambrose never talks nonsense!" she said, with gentle irony.
"But is it such nonsense, dear?" he urged, putting his arm around her waist, and looking up at her downcast face. "I don't think it is nonsense at all! If you knew how long even a few weeks seem to me – but I don't put it that way. But, remember, my darling, that this is all very well down here; I can run down and spend some hours with you – how short they seem, heigh ho! – but you will be going to London directly – "
"Directly I have finished this picture – next week," she put in gently.
"So soon?" he said, sadly. "Well then we sha'n't be able to see so much of each other; at least, Austin says we mustn't."
"Mr. Austin says so?"
He nodded.
"Yes; he is more anxious than ever that our engagement should be kept secret, and every time he sees me he talks and lectures me about it. 'He's such a careful man,' as the song says," and he laughed.
Margaret remained silent. What would the days be like in hot and dusty London if she were not to see Blair, not to hear the voice she loved murmuring its passionate devotion in her ears! Her bosom rose with a soft sigh.
"I suppose he is right – yes, he is right," she said. "And we shall meet, if we do meet, as strangers, Blair? But we sha'n't meet, shall we?"
"You are talking nonsense now," he chided her. "Of course we shall. I can take you up the river, up to Cookham and Pangbourne. How delightful it will be!"
"And some of your grand friends will see us, and then – "
"Oh, we'll chance that!" he said, lightly.
"We must chance nothing that may do you an injury, Blair," she said, gravely.
"Oh, Austin will take care that we do nothing imprudent," he said. "He has taken our case in hand, as he says, and we can't do better than put ourselves under his charge. You must paint some of our Thames views, Madge. You must paint one for me. By George! my uncle has got more mother wit in his little finger than I have in the whole of my body! Why didn't I give you a commission for a picture the first moment I knew you were an artist!"
"I shouldn't have accepted it," she said, smiling down at him. "But I'll paint you a picture, Blair; I will do it after I have finished this. Business must be attended to, you know, my lord."
He laughed.
"I wonder what he'll give you for that, Madge?" he said. "He ought to give you a hundred pounds. It's worth it. I'd give you a thousand if you'd let me."
"You'd ruin yourself, we all know," she said lightly, scarcely paying any heed to what she said, then as she saw him wince she dropped her brush and put her arm round his neck penitently.
"Oh, Blair, I meant nothing!" she murmured.
"I know, I know, dearest!" he said gravely. "But your light words reminded me of the fool I have been. But that is all altered now. Do you know that I have not made a single bet since – since you gave yourself to me? No! And I'm living as steady an existence as that man who always went home to tea. Austin says it won't and can't last; but we shall see."
It was always Austin. Scarcely ten sentences without his name cropping up.
"I don't see why Mr. Ambrose should discourage you, Blair," she said, smiling. "But you can prove him in the wrong all the more triumphantly," she added.
He laughed as he kissed her, telling her that she was his good angel, and that while she would continue to love him he was all right; but when he had gone, and she sat listening to his departing footsteps, she pondered over Austin Ambrose's words.
The next two days she worked hard at her picture, and on the third day finished it.
"What shall I do, grandma?" she said to Mrs. Hale. "I am going to London to-morrow, you know. Shall I send the picture from there, or give it to Mr. Stibbings to take to his lordship?"
"Give it to Mr. Stibbings," said Mrs. Hale, "with your dutiful respects and compliments, my dear."
Margaret gave the picture to Mr. Stibbings, but with her compliments only, and presently that important functionary returned.
Would Miss Hale honor the earl by joining him in the picture gallery?
Margaret went at once, and found him standing before her picture, which he had caused to be placed on an easel in the best lighted part of the gallery.
He held out his hand, and bowed to her with a kindly smile.
"You have painted a beautiful little sketch for me, Miss Hale," he said. "One I shall often look upon with pleasure and delight. And you have done it quickly, too, but not carelessly – no, no!"
Margaret murmured a few words in acknowledgment of his graciousness, and he went on:
"There is a career before you, my dear Miss Hale! You are one of the fortunate ones of this earth! Great gifts – great gifts" – and he looked at her absently; then he sighed and roused himself again – "but don't waste them, my child! I hope you are enjoying yourself here?"
"Very much, my lord," said Margaret. "I leave to-morrow," and she sighed faintly.
"To-morrow! So soon?" he said. "And you go back to London? I hope you will pay the Court another visit soon! I must speak to Mrs. Hale concerning it! Will you wait a moment or two?" and he drew a chair forward before he left the gallery.
Margaret sat and waited. How happy she had been! and yet if he only knew the cause of her happiness! If he could but guess that it was because she had won the love of his nephew, the Viscount Leyton.
She felt guilty and ill at ease, and when he returned, and approaching her with a smile, pressed some bank-notes into her hand, she began to tremble, and the tears rushed to her eyes.
"No thanks, my dear," he said. "Tut, tut! You must not wear your heart upon your sleeve, or daws will peck at it. You have no cause for gratitude; it is I who should and do feel grateful to you. Good-bye. May Heaven watch over you and make you happy, my dear!" It was almost like a benediction, for he half raised his white hand over her head.
When Margaret looked up he had gone.
She turned away, and the tears were still in her eyes as she opened the folded notes and looked at them. They represented a hundred pounds.
Mrs. Hale was quite overwhelmed.
"Well!" she exclaimed. "Gracious goodness! – a hundred pounds! Well, Margaret, my dear, I don't think you have any cause to regret your visit to your poor old grandmother. It hasn't been altogether a waste of time, now, has it?"
"No," said Margaret; "no, indeed, dear!" but even as she kissed the old lady and hid her face on her ample bosom, the same guilty feeling assailed her as that which had come upon her under the earl's generosity.
On the morrow she returned to London, but she had not to walk as she had done in coming. The earl had given orders that a brougham should be in attendance, and she started with a footman to open the door, and another to place her modest portmanteau on the roof, while the coachman touched his hat.
"Good-bye, grandma!" she said brokenly, as she clung to the old lady.
"Good-bye, Margaret, my dear! You will come again, and as soon as you can?"
"Yes," said Margaret, a lump rising in her throat. "Yes, I will come again – and soon."
But man proposes, and Providence disposes!
It was hot in London, and Margaret found her fellow-lodgers were away in the country, so that she had the rooms to herself.
She was thankful for their absence, for she would have shrunk from their affectionately close questioning, and they might have worried some hint of her secret from her.
An hour after her return a telegram arrived.
"Will you meet me at Waterloo at two o'clock? We will go up the river."
It was not signed, but Margaret knew that it was from Blair. Should she go?
She lay awake a long time that night asking herself the question, but at two o'clock the next day she found herself at Waterloo, and Austin Ambrose came up and raised his hat.
"You did not expect me?" he said with a smile, as her color rose.
"I – I thought – "
"It would be Blair," he finished smoothly. "He is not far off. He will join us at Clapham Junction. He wanted to come and meet you here, but I persuaded him to let me come instead. You know how prudent I am. A dozen people on the platform might chance to see him and recognize him and talk, while I – well nobody feels enough interest in me to care where I went," and he laughed.
"It is better so, and it is very kind of you," said Margaret.
"I am all kindness," he said, smiling. He put her into a first-class carriage, and Margaret saw his hand in close contact with the guards, and heard the lock turned.
"May I say that you are looking very well, Miss Margaret?" he said, leaning forward and looking at her with respectful and friendly admiration.
Margaret laughed.
"Did you take all this trouble to pay me compliments, Mr. Ambrose?"
"No," he said, with sudden gravity, but still smiling, "I came for prudence' sake, and because I wanted to speak to you. And I have so few minutes that I must get to the point at once. Miss Margaret, are you going to be good to Blair and marry him?"
Margaret flushed, then grew pale.
"Some day," she said, trying to speak lightly.
"Some day is no day," he returned. "Miss Margaret, you know, I hope and trust, that I am your friend?"
Margaret inclined her head.
"It is as your friend and his that I venture to beg you to make him the happiest man in the world as soon as possible."
Margaret remained silent; her hand trembled as she touched the window-strap.
"Why – why should it be soon?" she faltered. "It seems only a few days since – since – "
"It is some weeks," he said, quietly and impressively. "But, indeed, if it were only a few days, I would say the same. Miss Margaret, I can scarcely tell you all the reasons I have for pressing this upon you, and I would not do it, but that I know Blair is too – well – shy to do it altogether for himself. A simple 'no' from you silenced him! He told me, you see, that he spoke to you when he was down at the Court last."
"He tells you everything!" Margaret could not help saying.
"Do not be jealous!" he said; "if he does, it is because he knows that all that interests him interests me, and that I have his welfare at heart."
"Forgive me," she said, in a low voice. "Yes, he did speak to me."
"And he did not tell you the reasons? His, of course, are that he cannot be completely happy until you give him the right to call you his. But mine are as strong, I think! Miss Margaret, my friend's love for you has changed him; has made a better and a nobler man of him! Will you run the risk of that change deteriorating? Can you not guess something of the temptations which assail a man in Blair's position? Don't you apprehend that shadows from the past may arise, that – I will say no more! Complete the good work you have begun! Place him beyond the weak and wicked past in the harbor of your love. If Blair asks you to marry him early next month, Miss Margaret, I beseech you do not refuse!"
Margaret sat pale and trembling.
"Do not answer now," he said. "You shall tell him. I will only say this, that, if you will let me, I will remain your friend all through. I will see that all the arrangements are made, and that the whole thing is kept perfectly secret. You shall please yourself how soon you declare the marriage, but I should advise, strongly advise that you wait for a favorable opportunity." He was too wise to say, "Till the earl is dead!"
The train stopped at Clapham, and as Blair came hurrying up to the window, Austin Ambrose jumped out.
"Go and enjoy yourselves," he said, with a pleasant smile, and shaking his head to a request that he would accompany them. "Two are company, and three are none. Good-bye, Miss Margaret – and remember," he added, in a low voice.
Margaret did remember. All the afternoon, the happy afternoon, as she sat opposite Blair as he rowed up the beautiful reaches of the Thames, she thought of Austin Ambrose's words, and so it happened that when, later on, they were sitting under the trees, on an island that glowed like an emerald in the middle of the silver stream, he bent over her and murmured:
"Madge, will you marry me next month?" she placed her hand in his and answered:
"Yes!"
CHAPTER XIV
Just at this period a singular change came over Mr. Austin Ambrose's mode of life. As a rule he rarely left London. At a certain hour of the day you would find him in his chambers, at another riding or walking in the park, at another he would be dining at his club, and every night you were sure of seeing him at the whist table at any rate for an hour or two. But immediately after Margaret's promise to marry Lord Blair, Mr. Austin Ambrose took to taking little excursions in the environs of London, and the special objects of attraction for him seemed to be, strangely enough, seeing that he could by no means be called a religious man, the various churches in the villages dotted about Kent and Surrey. The smaller and more out of the way the village, and the more dilapidated and neglected the church, the more Mr. Austin Ambrose seemed to be attracted by them.
He chose the churches where the congregation is small and the clergyman old and feeble, and he would sit and listen as the old parsons dribbled out their prosy sermons, and the scattered people in the great pews nodded and slept.
One church he appeared to have a special liking for. It was situated in one of the small villages in Surrey called Sefton. There were only a few cottages and a farm, and the church was in a very dilapidated condition, and the clergyman seemed almost as worn out.
He was a very old man and nearly blind, and how he got through the service only those who are acquainted with similar cases can understand or believe. So past his time and dead to everything did the old gentleman appear that one could easily understand the point of the poet's lines:
"He lived but in a living sleep,
Too old to laugh or smile or weep."
"If one were to be married or buried by him on Monday he would forget it on Tuesday," Austin Ambrose murmured to himself as he sat at the back of one of the high backed pews and watched the old gentleman.
There was a parish clerk, too, who droned out the responses, and slept through the sermon – and snored – who was almost as old as the clergyman, and Mr. Austin Ambrose waylaid him and got into conversation with him after the service. It could scarcely be called conversation, however, for the old man merely grunted a "Yes," or "No," and smiled a toothless smile to Austin Ambrose's questions and remarks.
He seemed to remember nothing – excepting that "It were forty-two years agone since the small bell were cracked, and that's why we doan't ring 'em at marriages; they do seem so like a tolling, sir."
"You don't have many weddings, I suppose?" asked Mr. Ambrose.
The old man shook his head.
"Not a main sight," he said without exhibiting the faintest trace of interest. "Moast of our folks is too old to marry, and the young 'uns goes to the big church at Belton – away over there."
"When was the last?" asked Mr. Ambrose.
The clerk took up his hat slowly and scratched his head.
"I do scarce remember, sir," he said; "my memory ain't what it were. I'm getting on in years, you see – nearly eighty, sir; me and the parson runs a closish race," and he chuckled. "When was the last? Lemme see! Well, I could tell 'ee by the book, but the parson keeps that. I dare say he could put his hand upon it."
Mr. Ambrose laughed softly.
"You seem half asleep here at Sefton," he said pleasantly.
The old clerk grunted.
"I think we be sometimes, sir," he said. "But, you see, it's a miserable place now the coach has given up running through. Them railways and steam indians have a'most ruined the country."
"How long ago is it since the last coach ran?" asked Mr. Ambrose.
The poor old man looked bored to death.
"Thirty – forty year," he said. "I can't call to mind exactly; my memory hain't what it were."
Mr. Ambrose wished him good-day, and without tipping him – he did not want to fix himself in the old man's feeble memory – and repaired to the inn.
He called for a glass of ale, which he took care not to drink, and asked for a paper.
The landlord brought him a local one.
"Could I see a London one?" asked Mr. Ambrose.
The landlord shook his head.
"All the news as we care about, such as the state of the crops, and the prices at Coving Garden Market, is in that there paper; we don't trouble about a Lunnon one," he said.
Mr. Ambrose nodded and smiled, paid for his ale, and went back to London.
"Sefton is the place," he said. "It is so out of the world that they never see a London newspaper; so asleep that the noise of the great world rushing onward never wakes it, and the parson and clerk are faster asleep than anything else in it!"
He described the place in glowing colors to Margaret and Blair, a few nights afterward, as they three were sitting in a cool corner of the Botanical Gardens.
"A most delightful nook, my dear Miss Margaret; quite a typical old English village. I could spend the rest of my days there, and if I were going to be married – alas! why should it be one's fate to assist at other people's happiness, and have none oneself? – it is the place of all others I should choose for the ceremony."
"What does it matter where the church is?" said Blair, in his blunt fashion, and with a point-blank look of love at the sweet, downcast face beside him.
"It matters a great deal, my dear Blair; but I'm addressing Miss Margaret, who can appreciate the beauties of a scene, being an artist. I assure you it is a most charming spot, and it is so quiet and out of the way that I really think one might commit bigamy three times running there in as many weeks, and no one would be any the wiser. Why did you start, Blair?"
Margaret looked up at Blair at the question, and he met both her and Austin Ambrose's gaze with astonishment.
"Why did I what? Start? I didn't start," he said. "Why should I? What were you saying? To tell you the truth, I was looking at Madge's foot at the moment, and wondering how anybody could walk with such a mite, and comparing it with my own elephant's hoof. I didn't hear what you said quite."
Margaret drew her foot in, and looked up at him rebukingly.
"You shouldn't be frivolous, sir," she said.
"You shouldn't have such a small foot, miss," he retorted, in the fashion which is so sweet to lovers, and so silly to other people. "Now, what was it you said, Austin?"
Austin Ambrose laughed.
"Oh, some joke about bigamy, not worth repeating. I thought I had said something funny, you started so."
"But I didn't start," replied Blair, with a laugh.
"All right," assented Austin Ambrose; "you didn't, then. But I was going to say that another advantage is that Sefton is on the main line, and that you start from the church to that place in Devonshire where you are to be happier than ever two mortals have ever yet been. What is the name of it?"
"Appleford," said Blair.
"You will be down there about five o'clock," continued Austin Ambrose. "Just in time for dinner."
"What do you say, Madge?" asked Lord Blair, in a low voice.
Austin Ambrose rose and strolled toward some flowers.
"I say as you say, dearest," she answered, with a little sigh.
He looked at her.
"Just give me half a hint that you don't like all this secrecy – " he began; but she stopped him, raising her eyes to his with a trustful smile.
"We won't open all that again, Blair," she said. "Yes, Sefton will do."
"And you won't mind doing without the bridemaids and the white satin dress, and the bishop, and all that?" he asked, with half anxious but wholly loving regard.
Margaret returned his gaze steadily and unflinchingly.
"I care for none of them," she said, quietly. "If I could have had my choice I should have liked my grandmother; but we haven't our choice, and so nothing matters, Blair."
"You are the best-natured girl that ever breathed, Madge!" he said in a passionate whisper. "All my life through I shall remember what sacrifices you made for me. I shall never forget them! Never!"
"Have you made up your minds?" asked Austin, coming back.
"Yes; it is to be Sefton," said Madge herself.
"Very well, then," he answered. "Then, all the rest of the arrangements I can make easily."
And he was as good as his word.
He went down with Blair to get the special license; he engaged a sweet little cottage at Appleford; he saw the parson's clerk, and informed him of the date of the wedding; he even went with Blair to his tailor's to order some clothes.
The day approached. Margaret had made her preparations. They were simple enough, wonderfully and strangely simple, seeing that the man she was going to marry was a viscount, and heir to one of the oldest coronets in England.
"Don't buy a lot of dresses, Madge," Blair had said. "We shall be going to Paris and Italy after Appleford, and you can buy anything you want at Paris, don't you know."
She gave notice to quit to her landlady, and wrote a line or two to some of her companions. She did not say that she was going to be married, but that she was going for a long stay in the country, and she did not add what part.
The morning – the wedding morning – was as bright and even brilliant as a real summer morning in England can be – when it likes; and the sun shone on the new traveling dress – which was to be her wedding dress as well – as bravely as if it had been white satin itself.
All the way down to Sefton, Blair looked at her with the loving, wistful admiration of a bridegroom, and seemed never tired of telling her that she was all that was beautiful and lovable.
Austin Ambrose had gone into a smoking carriage and left them to themselves, but when the train pulled up at Sefton he came to the door.
"Are we going to walk?" inquired Blair.
"No, there is a fly," said Austin, and he led them to it quietly and got them inside.
Blair laughed.
"Poor old Austin! Upon my word, I think he enjoys all this mystery! He'd make a first-rate conspirator, wouldn't he? I say, he was right about the place, though, wasn't he? It is dead and alive!"
Margaret looked through the window. There were a few scattered cottages, one solitary farm, and at a little distance, half hidden amongst the trees, the old dilapidated church.
"It is quiet," she said; "but it is very pretty."
"Quiet!" and he laughed. "I'd no idea there were such spots near London. Austin must have had some trouble in finding such an out-of-the-way place."
And he spoke truly. Mr. Ambrose had taken a great deal of trouble.
The fly drove up to the church door, and Austin Ambrose got down from the box.
"You need not wait," he said to the flyman; "we are going to take a stroll through the church. It looks interesting."
The flyman pocketed his fare – the exact fare – and concluding that they were sight-seeing, drove sleepily off.
"Come along," said Austin Ambrose in a matter-of-fact fashion, and they followed him.
But the door was locked, and there was no sign of parson, or clerk, or pew-opener.
Austin Ambrose bit his lip, then laughed.
"I know where the old fellow lives," he said; "I'll rout him out."
He went to a little ivy-grown cottage just outside the churchyard, and presently returned with the ancient clerk.
"Mornin', miss; mornin', sir," he said, touching his battered old beaver. "I begs ten thousand pardons, but I quite forgot as how there was a wedding this mornin'; but I dessay the parson have recollected. Howsomever, I'll open the church," and he unlocked the door and signed for them to enter.
Margaret tremblingly clung a little closer to Blair's arm and he murmured a few words of encouragement.
"Hang it, Austin!" he said, aside; "it scarcely seems as if we were going to be married. It only wants a hearse – "
Austin laughed.
"Nonsense. It is just what you want. They have forgotten you are to be married, and they'll forget all about it half an hour after it is over. Here is the parson; I did his memory an injustice!"
The old gentleman came shuffling up the porch and blinked at them over his spectacles.
"Good-morning, Mr. Stanley," he said.
Blair stared, then, remembering that that was the name he had arranged to assume, returned the greeting.
The pew-opener, an ancient dame, with a "front" slipping down nearly to her nose, now made her appearance, and the party went into the church.
The clerk assisted the clergyman into his surplice, and got out the register, and Blair, pressing Margaret's hand, walked up to the altar.
Austin Ambrose paused a moment before accompanying, and whispered to Margaret:
"You will take care not to address either of us by name?"
She made a motion of assent, and, pale and trembling, followed with the pew-opener and clerk.
The service began. It was scarcely audible; at times the old clergyman was taken with a cough that threatened to shake him, and the book he held, and, indeed, the church itself, into pieces, but he struggled through it; and in a few minutes Margaret found herself leaning upon Blair's arm, and heard him murmur – with what intensity of love! – "My wife!"
"Now, if you'll sign the book," said the clerk. "Lemme see; what is the name?" and he peered at the license.
"Here is the name!" said Austin Ambrose. "It is rather a long one, and I've written it down," and he handed him a slip of paper.
Blair, to whom the remainder of the formalities was caviare, was bending over Margaret at a little distance, and buttoning her gloves.
"Ah! yes! ahem! thank you!" said the clerk. "Now, if you'll sign, please."
They signed, the old clergyman peering down at them with a benign and utterly senile smile.
He had never heard of Lord Ferrers or of Lord Leyton, and this string of names might belong to some young shopkeeper's assistant for all he knew or cared; but he did inquire for the license.
"I put it in the book," said Austin Ambrose. He had got it in his pocket.
"Oh, very well! Yes, thank you! Well, I trust you will be happy, young couple; yes, with all my heart. You have got a beautiful morning; and where are you going to spend your honeymoon?"