Mrs. Butler, who led the van of the “Beatricites,” was less voluble than Mrs. Bell, but her words were weighted with a very deadly shaft of poison.  After Mrs. Butler had extolled Beatrice as a perfect model of all womanly graces and virtue, she proceeded, with keen relish, to take Josephine Hart to pieces.  When she began to dissect Miss Hart she invariably sent her innocent sister, Maria, out of the room.  It is unnecessary to repeat what passed behind the doors which were so cruelly closed on eager and curious Miss Peters, but it is not too much to say that poor Josephine had not a rag of character left to her when the good woman’s tongue ceased to wag.

Thus the town of Northbury was in a distressing state of uproar during the three or four days which preceded Captain Bertram’s wedding.  And perhaps the cruellest thing about this fierce civil war was that none of the combatants, not even the leaders, knew what was really about to take place, nor who was to be married to whom on Tuesday, nor whether there was to be any wedding at all.  The bridal dresses came home, and some of the ladies wept when they looked at them.  Beatrice still received wedding presents, and the bridal robe of ivory-white silk trimmed with quantities of Honiton lace was absolutely sent down from London, all complete and ready for Beatrice to wear.  Half the ladies in Northbury rushed up to the station when the news was brought to them that the box had arrived, and the porter, Payne by name, who carried the box to Mrs. Meadowsweet’s, was followed by quite a little mob.

Thus time went on apace, and Rumor did his work, each lady saying when she met another: 

“Well, what’s the news?  What’s the latest?  What did you hear last?”

Each Hartite bowed coldly to each Beatricite, or else cut each other dead, and, in short, the usual symptoms which accompany civil war made themselves felt.

It is a fact frequently noted that when Rumor, with his double-edged tongue is abroad, the persons most concerned often know nothing of the storm which is raging around them.  In the present instance, two people who were keenly interested in coming events were in this position.  One of them was Mrs. Meadowsweet, the other, Mrs. Bertram.  The time would come when Beatrice would confide in her mother, but that moment had not yet arrived.  The old lady wondered why she had so many visitors, and why people looked at her in a curious, pitying sort of fashion.  Why also they invariably spoke of Beatrice as “poor dear,” and inquired with tender solicitude for her health.

“Brides usedn’t to be ‘poor deared’ in my day,” the old lady remarked rather testily to her handmaiden, Jane.  “Any one would suppose Beatrice was going to have an illness instead of a wedding from the way folks talk of her.”

“Eh, well, ma’am,” Jane replied.

Jane’s “eh, well, ma’am” was as full of suppressed meaning as a balloon is full of air.  She heaved a prodigious sigh as she spoke, for of course she had heard the gossip, and had indeed come to blows with a Hartite that very morning.