When the day came round she dressed herself, for the first time in her whole life, in proper evening costume—­white silk, white lace, ornaments, and flowers.  Not too youthful a toilet, for she had no wish to appear young now, but still bridal—­a “bride adorned with her jewels,” only these were but few.  She was fastening her one opal brooch, and looking into the mirror, half sad, half wondering to see herself so fair, when Dr. Grey entered.

He had a jeweler’s case in his hand.  Awkwardly, even nervously, he fastened a cross round her neck, and put a bracelet on her arm.  Both were simple enough, but, little as she knew about such things, Christian could see they were made of very magnificent diamonds,

“Do you like them?  They are for you.”

“You have not bought them on purpose?”

“Oh no, that extravagance was quite beyond me; but I had them re-set.  They belonged to my mother, and have never been worn till now.  Will my wife wear them?”

Christian drooped her head.  Great tears were gathering under her eyelids.

“I am so foolish—­so very foolish; and you are so good to me—­so unfailingly, unceasingly good.  I try to be good too; I do indeed.  Don’t be angry with me.”

“Angry!  My darling!”

People may write sentiment by the page, or talk it by the hour, but there is something in real love which will neither be discussed nor described.  Let us draw over it the holy veil of silence:  these things ought to belong to two alone.

Dr. Grey’s wife knew how he loved her.  And when he quitted her to order the carriage which was to take them to the grand dinner party, she stood, all in her fine garments, a fair, white, bridal-like vision—­stood and wept.

It is a law most absolute and inevitable that love, however great, however small, never remains quite stationary; it must either diminish or increase.  When Christian awoke out of the stunned condition which had been hers both before and after her marriage, she began to awake also to the dawning consciousness of what real marriage ought to be—­the perfect, sacred union, so seldom realized or even sought for, and yet none the less the right aim and just desire of every true man and woman, which, when not attained, makes the life imperfect, and the marriage, if not a sin, a terrible mistake.

“I have sinned!  I have sinned!” was the perpetual cry of Christian’s heart, which she had thought was dead as a stone, and now discovered to be a living, throbbing woman’s heart, which needed its lord, was ready to obey him, love and serve him, nay, fall down in the very dust before him, if only he could be found!  And she knew now—­knew by the agony of regret for all she had missed, that he never had been found; that the slain love over which she had mourned had been a mere fancy, not a vital human love at all.