“He is as well able to bear a little contradiction as the rest of us,” said Lady Latimer, looking lofty.  “In my day the lady was consulted.  Now everything must be arranged to accommodate the gentleman.  I’m sure we are grown very humble!”

Bessie looked meekly on the carpet and did not belie my lady’s words.  Something in her air was provoking—­perhaps that very meekness, in certain lights so foreign to her character—­for Lady Latimer colored, and continued in her frostiest tone:  “If you are ashamed of the connection you are forming, that justifies your not inviting the world to look on at your wedding, which ought to be an hour of pride and triumph to a girl.”

Bessie’s meekness vanished in a blush:  “And it will be an hour of triumph to me.  Ashamed!  Harry Musgrave is to me the best and dearest heart that breathes,” she exclaimed; and my lady was too well advised to prolong the argument, especially as she felt that it would be useless.

Harry Musgrave was not grudging of his gratitude for real kindness, and though, when he was in his stronger mood, Lady Latimer was perhaps still disposed to huff him, the next hour she was as good as she knew how to be.  The visit to the island was productive of excellent results in the way of a better understanding, and my lady made no more opposition to Elizabeth’s leaving her and taking up her abode in Mr. Carnegie’s house until her marriage.

For a day or two the triangular nest under the thatch felt small and confined to Bessie, but one morning the rustic sweetness of honeysuckle blowing in at the open lattice awoke in her memory a thousand happy childish recollections and brought back all the dear home-feelings.  Then Harry Musgrave was more like his original self here than elsewhere.  Insensibly he fell into his easy boyish pleasantry of manner, and announced himself as more secure of his fate when he found Bessie sitting in company with a work-basket in the pretty, low, old-fashioned drawing-room, perfumed with roses overflowing the china bowl.  Bessie had a perfect notion of the fitness of things, and as simplicity of dress seemed best suited to her beauty in that place, she attired herself in her plainest and most becoming gown, and Harry looked her over approvingly and called her his dear little Bessie again.  The doctor, her mother, the children, every early friend out of the house, was glad, and congratulated her upon her return to the Forest and to them.  And now and then, in the dreamy length of the days when she sat thinking, all the interval of time and all the change of scene, circumstance, and faces since she first went away appeared to her like a dream of the night when it is gone.

Of course she had to listen to the moralities of this last vicissitude from her various friends.