Sir Edward wished to collect his neighbors round him once more before he left them for another four months; and accordingly the rector and his wife, Francis and Clara, the Haughtons, with a few others, dined at the Hall by invitation, the last day of their stay in Northamptonshire.  The company had left the table to join the ladies, when Grace came into the drawing-room with a face covered with smiles and beaming with pleasure.

“You look like the bearer of good news, Mrs. Moseley,” cried the rector, catching a glimpse of her countenance as she passed.

“Good!  I sincerely hope and believe,” replied Grace.  “My letters from my brother announce that his marriage took place last week, and give us hopes of seeing them all in town within the month.”

“Married!” exclaimed Mr. Haughton, casting his eyes unconsciously on Emily, “my Lord Chatterton married!  May I ask the name of the bride, my dear Mrs. Moseley?”

“To Lady Harriet Denbigh—­and at Denbigh Castle in Westmoreland; but very privately, as you may suppose from seeing Moseley and myself here,” answered Grace, her cheeks yet glowing with surprise and pleasure at the intelligence.

“Lady Harriet Denbigh?” echoed Mr. Haughton; “what! a kinswoman of our old friend? your friend, Miss Emily?” The recollection of the service he had performed at the arbor still-fresh in his memory.

Emily commanded herself sufficiently to reply, “Brothers’ children, I believe, sir.”

“But a lady—­how came she my lady?” continued the good man, anxious to know the whole, and ignorant of any reasons for delicacy where so great a favorite as Denbigh was in the question.

“She is the daughter of the late Duke of Derwent,” said Mrs. Moseley, as willing as himself to talk of her new sister.

“How happens it that the death of old Mr. Denbigh was announced as plain Geo. Denbigh, Esq., if he was the brother of a duke?” said Jane, forgetting for a moment the presence of Dr. and Mrs. Ives, in her surviving passion for genealogy:  “should he not have been called Lord George, or honorable?”

This was the first time any allusion had been made to the sudden death in the church by any of the Moseleys in the hearing of the rector’s family; and the speaker sat in breathless terror at her own inadvertency.  But Dr. Ives, observing that a profound silence prevailed as soon as Jane ended, answered, mildly, though in a way to prevent any further comments—­

“The late Duke’s succeeding a cousin-german in the title, was the reason, I presume, Emily, I am to hear from you by letter I hope, after you enter into the gaieties of the metropolis?”

This Emily cheerfully promised, and the conversation took another turn.

Mrs. Wilson had carefully avoided all communications with the rector concerning his youthful friend, and the Doctor appeared unwilling to commence anything which might lead to his name being mentioned.  “He is disappointed in him as well as ourselves,” thought the widow, “and it must be unpleasant to have his image recalled.  He saw his attentions to Emily, and he knows of his marriage to Lady Laura of course, and he loves us all, and Emily in particular, too well not to feel hurt by his conduct.”