After that, Lord Hardy kept quiet, though he was never so near a fever as during the week which preceded his nuptials.  For Augusta herself he did not care at all, as men are supposed to care for the girl they are about to marry.  He did not dislike her, and he thought her rather pretty and lady-like, with a far better education than his own; but, strangely enough in these last days of his bachelorhood, he often found himself living over again those far-off times in Monte Carlo, when, as Cousin Sue from Bangor, he had laughed and talked and flirted with poor little Daisy, as he called her to himself, now that she was dead, and the grave had closed over all her faults and misdemeanors.  She had been the cause of his ruin, and he had, at times, hated her for it, but she had been jolly company for all that, and he wondered what she would say if she could know that Mrs. Rossiter-Browne was to be his mother-in-law and Augusta Lady Hardy.

“She would turn over in her coffin, I do believe,” he thought, and then he wondered how much Augusta’s wedding portion would be, and how far it would go toward restoring his Irish home to something like its former condition.  But on this point, pere Browne maintained a rigid silence, and he was obliged to be content with the hints which mere Browne dropped from time to time.  She had made minute inquiries with regard to Hardy Manor, her daughter’s future home, and at her request he had made a drawing of it, so that she knew just how many rooms there were, and how they were furnished.

“I shall h’ist them feather beds out double quick,” she said, “and them high four-posters, with tops like a buggy.  I’d as soon sleep in a hearse, and I shall put in some brass bedsteads and hair mattresses, and mabby I shall furnish Gusty’s room with willer work.  I’ll show ’em what Uncle Sam can do.”

Was she then going with him to Hardy Manor, and must he present her to his aristocratic friends as the mother of his bride?  The very possibility of such a calamity made the perspiration ooze from the tips of Lord Hardy’s fingers to the roots of his hair, and once he contemplated running away and taking the first ship which sailed for Liverpool.  But when he remembered his debts he concluded to swallow everything, even the mother-in-law, if necessary.  He was to sail the last week in November, and as, when he engaged his state-room, nothing had been said about a second one for Mrs. Browne, he comforted himself with the hope that she did not meditate going with him.  She would, perhaps, come in the spring, by which time he might be glad for the brass bedsteads and hair mattresses which abounded at the Ridge House, and which were really more in accordance with his luxurious tastes than the feather beds and high four-posters which had done duty at Hardy Manor for more years than he could remember.