“It’s you, Bee, at last,” said her mother.

She went straight up to the girl, and taking one of her hands raised it to her lips.

“You have come, Bee,” she said in a purring cone of delight and content.  “My girl has come at last, neighbors, and now I’ll wish you, every one, a very good-night.  I’m obliged for all sympathy, and if I don’t understand these new-fashioned ways about weddings with their poor dears, and their poor friends, and drowning of somebody’s character, and saving of somebody else’s character, it’s because I’m old-fashioned, and belong to an ancient school.  Good-night, friends.  Is that you, Jane?”

Jane appeared, bearing in a cup of cocoa for Beatrice.

“Jane, show these ladies out.”

They all went.  They hated to go, but they went, for the mantle of innocence and ignorance in which Mrs. Meadowsweet was so securely wrapped gave her a certain dignity which they could not resist.  Jane shut the door on them, and they stood still outside the house, and wrangled, and talked, and worked themselves into a perfect rage of excitement and curiosity and longing.  “Well, well, all surmises would soon be at rest.  Who would win, Beatrice or Josephine?  Who would be to-morrow’s bride.”

“Mother,” said Beatrice, when the ladies had left—­she looked into her old mother’s face.  There was an expression in her eyes which made Mrs. Meadowsweet cry out: 

“Bee, you have got a hunger at your heart.  Oh, child, you want your mammy—­I never saw that look in your eyes since long, long ago, when you were a little tot, and wanted your mammy more than anything else in all the wide world.”

“I want her now,” said Beatrice.

She put her arms about her mother, and wept on her shoulder.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE MORNING OF THE WEDDING.

Beatrice had seen Mr. Ingram.  She had gone to him, but not to stay.

“You must go to Mrs. Bertram’s,” she said; “she has a trouble on her mind.  Get her to tell it to you.  She will be better afterwards.  She fears much.  I guess a little of what she fears.  She does not know that by to-morrow night all her anxieties will be over.”

“And the wedding is really to take place in the morning, Beatrice?”

“Really and truly.  I will be present as bride’s-maid, not as bride.”

Beatrice went home, and Mr. Ingram hastened to the Manor.

There was much confusion there.  Mrs. Bertram was very ill; she would not see her daughters, she would allow no doctor to be summoned.  Mabel was crying in the drawing-room.  Catherine was pacing up and down the corridor outside her mother’s room.

The Rector came.  Bertram saw him for a few moments alone; then he went into Mrs. Bertram’s room.  He stayed with her for some hours; it was long past midnight when he left her.  Catherine and Mabel had gone to bed, but Bertram met the Rector outside his mother’s door.