“Difference!” she repeated.  “No, why should it?  Oh, Grey, you are not going to give me up because of that?  I was not to blame;” and in Bessie’s voice there was such a pleading pathos, that when she stretched her hands toward him, Grey took her in his arms, feeling that all his doubts and fears were removed, and that Bessie might be his in spite of everything.

For a long time they talked together of the course to be pursued, deciding finally that the matter should be kept to themselves until Grey and Bessie were married, and with Hannah had been to Wales and proved the validity of Bessie’s claim to the effects of Joel Rogers.

There was no longer any talk of waiting until Christmas Eve, for the marriage was to take place as soon as possible, and when Grey took Bessie home to Miss McPherson he startled that good woman with the announcement that he was to be married the last week in November and sail at once for Europe, taking his Aunt Hannah with him.

CHAPTER XV.

WEDDING BELLS.

They rang first for Lord Hardy and Augusta Browne, who had intended to be married in October, but whose wedding was deferred until the second week in November, because, as Mrs. Rossiter-Browne expressed it, “Gusty’s bridal trouses could not arrive in time from Paris.”  Everything pertaining to the young lady’s wardrobe was ordered either from London or Paris, and could Mrs. Browne have done it she would have bought the Arch of Triumph, and, transporting it to Allington, would have set it up in front of her house and illuminated it for the occasion.  She should never have another daughter marry an Irish lord, she said, and she meant “to make a splurge and astonish the natives,” and she did.

She had a temporary ball-room built at one side of the house, and lighted it with a thousand wax candles.  She had a brass band from Springfield and a string band from Worcester.  She had a caterer from Boston, whom with her usual happy form of expression she called a “canterer.”  She had colored waiters in white gloves in such profusion that they stumbled over and against each other.  She had an awning stretched from the front door to the gate, with yards and yards of carpeting under it.

“She had not been abroad for nothing, and she guessed she knew what was what,” she said to Lord Hardy when he hinted that a plainer wedding would suit him quite as well, and that the money she was expending could be put to better purpose.

“I guess we can stand it, and still have a nice little sum for Gusty,” she added, and patting her future son-in-law upon the back she bade him “keep cool and let her run the machine.”