“They are good fellows,” he said, after a time, “very good fellows, but it is trying, isn’t it, Martin?  It is as if no man was ever married before; though they have gone through it themselves, and ought to know how one feels.  Now you take it quietly, my boy, and you do not know how deeply I feel obliged to you.”

There was some reason for me to take it quietly.  I could not help thinking how nearly I had been myself in Captain Carey’s position.  I knew that Julia and I would have led a tranquil, matter-of-fact, pleasant enough life together, but for the unlucky fate that had carried me across to Sark to fall in love with Olivia.  There was something enviable in the tranquil prosperity I had forfeited.  Guernsey was the dearest spot on earth to me, yet I was practically banished from it.  Julia was, beyond all doubt, the woman I loved most, next to Olivia, but she was lost to me.  There was no hope for me on the other hand.  Foster was well again, and by my means.  Probably I might secure peace and comparative freedom for Olivia, but that was all.  She could never be more to me than she was now.  My only prospect was that of a dreary bachelorhood; and Captain Carey’s bashful exultation made the future seem less tolerable to me.

I felt it more still when, after dinner in the cool of the summer evening, we drove lack into town to see Julia for the last time before we met in church the next morning.  There was an air of glad excitement pervading the house.  Friends were running in, with gifts and pleasant words of congratulation.  Julia herself had a peculiar modest stateliness and frank dignity, which suited her well.  She was happy and content, and her face glowed.  Captain Carey’s manner was one of tender chivalry, somewhat old-fashioned.  I found it a hard thing to “look at happiness through another man’s eyes.”

I drove Captain Carey and Johanna home along the low, level shore which I had so often traversed with my heart full of Olivia.  It was dusk, the dusk of a summer’s night; but the sea was luminous, and Sark lay upon it a bank of silent darkness, sleeping to the music of the waves.  A strong yearning came over me, a longing to know immediately the fate of my Olivia.  Would to Heaven she could return to Sark, and be cradled there in its silent and isolated dells!  Would to Heaven this huge load of anxiety and care for her, which bowed me down, might be taken away altogether!

“A fortnight longer,” I said to myself, “and Tardif will know where she is; then I can take measures for her tranquillity and safety in the future.”

It was well for me that I had slept during my passage, for I had little sleep during that night.  Twice I was aroused by the voice of Captain Carey at my door, inquiring what the London time was, and if I could rely upon my watch not having stopped.  At four o’clock he insisted upon everybody in the house getting up.  The ceremony was to be solemnized at seven, for the mail-steamer from Jersey to England was due in Guernsey at nine, and there were no other means of quitting the island later in the day.  Under these circumstances there could be no formal wedding-breakfast, a matter not much to be regretted.  There would not be too much time, so Johanna said, for the bride to change her wedding-dress at her own house for a suitable travelling-costume, and the rest of the day would be our own.