But she was there with Grey, to whose arm she clung as she looked wonderingly on at the gorgeous display, unlike anything which was ever seen in Allington before, or ever would be again.

Altogether it was a most brilliant and successful affair, and the reporters, who had been hired to be present, did it ample justice in the next day’s papers.  “Festivities in High Life” headed the column, in which the beauty and accomplishments of the bride were dwelt upon at large, while free scope was given to the imagination and the pen when it came to the elegant manners of the hostess, the air of refinement and cultivation perceptible among the guests, and the signs of wealth and perfect taste everywhere visible.  The great popularity of the family was also dwelt upon as proven by the immense crowd thronging the streets, and Lord Hardy was congratulated upon his rare good luck, and hints were thrown out that England and Ireland ought to feel complimented that so many of America’s fair daughters were willing to wear a foreign title and grace a foreign home.

“What fools those reporters are, to be sure, and the Brownes are bigger fools to allow such stuff to be printed,” was Miss McPherson’s comment upon the articles which appeared in the Spy and the Gazette, and the Springfield Republican, and her opinion was pretty generally shared by the citizens of Allington, who immediately raked up the ashes of the Brownes’ past history, and recalled with great zest the times when Mrs. Browne had worked in the kitchen at Grey’s Park, while poor Mr. Browne was charged with every possible second-class occupation, from mending brass kettles down to peddling clothes-pins.

Fortunately, however, Mrs. Browne was in happy ignorance of all this.  She only knew that she had “killed a bear,” as she expressed it, and that she had been described as an elegant and accomplished lady, who led the ton in Allington.

“I guess I’ve whipped ’em all, though I’ll wait and see what Miss McPherson does,” she said; but Miss McPherson did nothing.

It was the wish of both Bessie and Grey that the wedding should be as quiet as possible.  Any one was free to go to the church where the ceremony took place one morning the last week in November, and which was filled with plain, respectable people.  But only Hannah and Lucy Grey, Mr. and Mrs. Burton Jerrold, and the clergyman, Mr. Sanford, went to the house, where the wedding-breakfast was served, and where Miss Betsey broke down more than once, as she thought how soon she had lost the girl whom she had learned to love so much.  Grey and Bessie were going to New York that afternoon, for they were to sail the next day, and Hannah was going with them.  No good reason had been assigned for this sudden trip across the ocean at this season of the year, and only Mr. Sanford knew why it was taken.  Hannah had told him everything, and while he expressed his pleasure that the long search and waiting had at last been rewarded in so satisfactory a manner, he added, sadly: