“Poor dear! poor dear! this is a great change for her, and only a year since her father died,” said Mrs. Ferguson, still in that mysterious, apologetic whisper.  “But indeed, my love, you have done quite right in marrying; and don’t fret a bit about it.  Never mind her, sir; she’ll be better by-and-by.”  This oppression of pity would have nerved any one of reserved temperament to die rather than betray the least fragment of emotion more.  Christian gathered herself up; her face grew pale again, and her voice steady.  She looked, not at Mrs. Ferguson, but at the good man who had just made her his wife—­and any one looking at him must have felt that he was a good man—­then said, gently but determinedly,

“If Dr. Grey has no objection, I should like to have stated my father’s occupation or my own.  I do not wish to hide or appear ashamed of either.”

“Certainly not,” replied Dr. Grey; and, taking up the pen, he added, “Edward Oakley, Esq., late organist of Saint Bede’s.”  It was the last earthly memento of one who, born a gentleman and a genius, had so lived, that, as all Avonsbridge well knew, the greatest blessing which could have happened to his daughter was his death.  But, as by some strange and merciful law of compensation often occurs, Christian, inheriting mind and person from him, had inherited temperament, disposition, character from the lowly-born mother, who was every thing that he was not, and who had lived just long enough to stamp on the girl of thirteen a moral impress which could resist all contamination, and leave behind a lovely dream of motherhood that might, perhaps—­ God knows!—­have been diviner than the reality.

These things Dr. Grey, brought accidentally into contact with Christian Oakley on business matters after her father’s lamentable death, speedily discovered for himself; and the result was one of those sudden resolves which in some men spring from mere passion, in others from an instinct so deep and true that they are not to be judged by ordinary rules.  People call it “love at first sight,” and sometimes tell wonderful stories of how a man sees, quite unexpectedly, some sweet, strange, and yet mysteriously familiar face, which takes possession of his fancy with an almost supernatural force.  He says to himself, “That woman shall be my wife;” and some day, months or years after, he actually marries her; even as, within a twelvemonth, having waited silently until she was twenty-one, Dr. Grey married Christian Oakley.

But until within a few weeks ago she herself had had no idea of the kind.  She intensely respected him; her gratitude for his fatherly care and kindness was almost boundless; but marrying him, or marrying at all, was quite foreign to her thoughts.  How things had come about even yet she could hardly remember or comprehend.  All was a perfect dream.  It seemed another person, and not she, who was suddenly changed from Mrs. Ferguson’s poor governess, without a friend or relative in the wide world, to the wife of the Master of Saint Bede’s.