There was no hitch or hindrance; and the thing is done.

4 p.m.—­They ought to have set out on their journey by this time; but there is an unaccountable delay.  Charles went out half-an-hour ago, and has not yet returned.  Caroline is waiting in the hall; but I am dreadfully afraid they will miss the train.  I suppose the trifling hindrance is of no account; and yet I am full of misgivings . . .

Sept. 14.—­Four months have passed; only four months!  It seems like years.  Can it be that only seventeen weeks ago I set on this paper the fact of their marriage?  I am now an aged woman by comparison!

On that never to be forgotten day we waited and waited, and Charles did not return.  At six o’clock, when poor little Caroline had gone back to her room in a state of suspense impossible to describe, a man who worked in the water-meadows came to the house and asked for my father.  He had an interview with him in the study.  My father then rang his bell, and sent for me.  I went down; and I then learnt the fatal news.  Charles was no more.  The waterman had been going to shut down the hatches of a weir in the meads when he saw a hat on the edge of the pool below, floating round and round in the eddy, and looking into the pool saw something strange at the bottom.  He knew what it meant, and lowering the hatches so that the water was still, could distinctly see the body.  It is needless to write particulars that were in the newspapers at the time.  Charles was brought to the house, but he was dead.

We all feared for Caroline; and she suffered much; but strange to say, her suffering was purely of the nature of deep grief which found relief in sobbing and tears.  It came out at the inquest that Charles had been accustomed to cross the meads to give an occasional half-crown to an old man who lived on the opposite hill, who had once been a landscape painter in an humble way till he lost his eyesight; and it was assumed that he had gone thither for the same purpose to-day, and to bid him farewell.  On this information the coroner’s jury found that his death had been caused by misadventure; and everybody believes to this hour that he was drowned while crossing the weir to relieve the old man.  Except one:  she believes in no accident.  After the stunning effect of the first news, I thought it strange that he should have chosen to go on such an errand at the last moment, and to go personally, when there was so little time to spare, since any gift could have been so easily sent by another hand.  Further reflection has convinced me that this step out of life was as much a part of the day’s plan as was the wedding in the church hard by.  They were the two halves of his complete intention when he gave me on the Grand Canal that assurance which I shall never forget:  ’Very well, then; honour shall be my word, not love.  If she says “Yes,” the marriage shall be.’

I do not know why I should have made this entry at this particular time; but it has occurred to me to do it—­to complete, in a measure, that part of my desultory chronicle which relates to the love-story of my sister and Charles.  She lives on meekly in her grief; and will probably outlive it; while I—­but never mind me.