And now, it may strike the reader as very strange, but, as a matter of fact, ten days from the date of the above conversation, there was a small-and-early gathering at St. George’s, Hanover-square, close by.  I say “small,” for the marriage had been kept quite secret, in order to prevent curiosity-mongers from marching down upon it in their thousands, as they would certainly have done had it been announced that the heroine of the great will case was going to be married.  Therefore the party was very select.  Augusta had no relations of her own; and so she had asked Dr. Probate, with whom she had struck up a great friendship, to come and give her away; and, though the old gentleman’s previous career had had more connection with the undoing of the nuptial tie than with its contraction, he could not find it in his heart to refuse.

“I shall be neglecting my duties, you know, my dear young lady,” he said, shaking his head.  “It’s very wrong—­very wrong, for I ought to be at the Registry; but—­well, perhaps I can manage to come—­very wrong, though—­very wrong, and quite out of my line of business!  I expect that I shall begin to address the Court—­I mean the clergyman—­for the petitioner.”

And so it came to pass that on this auspicious day the registering was left to look after itself; and, as a matter of history, it may be stated that no question was asked in Parliament about it.

Then there was Lady Holmhurst, looking very pretty in her widow’s dress; and her boy Dick, who was in the highest spirits, and bursting with health and wonder at these strange proceedings on the part of his “Auntie”; and, of course, the legal twins brought up the rear.

And there in the vestry stood Augusta in her bridal dress, as sweet a woman as ever the sun shone on; and looking at her beautiful face, Dr. Probate nearly fell in love with her himself.  And yet it was a sad face just then.  She was happy—­very, as a loving woman who is about to be made a wife should be; but when a great joy draws near to us it comes companioned by the shadows of our old griefs.

The highest sort of happiness has a peculiar faculty of recalling to our minds that which has troubled them in the past, the truth being, that extremes in this, as in other matters, will sometimes touch, which would seem to suggest that sorrow and happiness—­however varied in their bloom—­yet have a common root.  Thus it was with Augusta now.  As she stood in the vestry there came to her mind a recollection of her dear little sister, and of how she had prophesied happy greatness and success for her.  Now the happiness and the success were at hand, and there in the aisle stood her own true love; but yet the recollection of that dear face, and of the little mound that covered it, rested on them like a shadow.  It passed with a sigh, and in its place there came the memory of poor Mr. Tombey, but for whom she would not have been standing there a bride, and of his last words as he