“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Sir Hugh to his wife that night; “sixty thousand a year is a very fine income, but Julia will find she has caught a tartar.”

“I suppose he’ll hardly live long; will he?”

“I don’t know or care when he lives or when he dies; but, by heaven, he is the most overbearing fellow I ever had in the house with me.  I wouldn’t stand him here for another fortnight—­not even to make her all safe.”

“It will soon be over.  They’ll be gone on Thursday.”

“What do you think of his having the impudence to tell Cunliffe”—­Cunliffe was the head keeper—­“before my face, that he didn’t know anything about pheasants!  ’Well, my lord, I think we’ve got a few about the place,’ said Cunliffe.  ‘Very few,’ said Ongar, with a sneer.  Now, if I haven’t a better head of game here than he has at Courton, I’ll eat him.  But the impudence of his saying that before me!”

“Did you make him any answer?”

“‘There’s about enough to suit me,’ I said.  Then he skulked away, knocked off his pins.  I shouldn’t like to be his wife; I can tell Julia that.”

“Julia is very clever,” said the sister.

The day of the marriage came, and everything at Clavering was done with much splendor.  Four bridesmaids came down from London on the preceding day; two were already staying in the house, and the two cousins came as two more from the rectory.  Julia Brabazon had never been really intimate with Mary and Fanny Clavering, but she had known them well enough to make it odd if she did not ask them to come to her wedding and to take a part in the ceremony.  And, moreover, she had thought of Harry and her little romance of other days.  Harry, perhaps, might be glad to know that she had shown this courtesy to his sisters.  Harry, she knew, would be away at his school.  Though she had asked him whether he meant to come to her wedding, she had been better pleased that he should be absent.  She had not many regrets herself but it pleased her to think that he should have them.  So Mary and Fanny Clavering were asked to attend her at the altar.  Mary and Fanny would both have preferred to decline, but their mother had told them that they could not do so.  “It would make ill-feeling,” said Mrs. Clavering; “and that is what your papa particularly wishes to avoid.”

“When you say papa particularly wishes anything, mamma, you always mean that you wish it particularly yourself,” said Fanny.  “But if it must be done, it must; and then I shall know how to behave when Mary’s time comes.”

The bells were rung lustily all the morning, and all the parish was there, round about the church, to see.  There was no record of a lord ever having been married in Clavering church before; and now this lord was going to marry my lady’s sister.  It was all one as though she were a Clavering herself.  But there was no ecstatic joy in the parish.  There were to be no bonfires, and no eating and drinking