Harold bade me go, and as the bride declared they could not sit down without him, he answered, “Not yet, thank you, I couldn’t.”  And I remembered that his prompt deed of daring had been in defiance of a strong nervous antipathy.  There was a spasmodic effort in the smile he attempted, a twitching in the muscles of his throat; he was as pale as his browned cheeks could become, and his hand was still so unsteady that he was forced to resign to me the spoonful of cordial to put into Dora’s mouth.

And at that moment Eustace turned and said, “Have you brought the nuggets?”

Without speaking Harold put his hand into his pocket, and laid them in Eustace’s hand.

“These? you said they were golden apples; I thought they would be bigger.”

“They are wonderful,” said Hippolyta; “no one ever had such a wedding-gift.”

“Not that—­a debt,” said Harold, hoarsely; but Pippa Horsman came and summoned them, and I was obliged to follow, answering old Marianne’s entreaties to say what would be good for him by begging for strong coffee, which she promised and ordered, but in the skurry of the household, it never came.

The banquet, held in a tent, was meant to be a brilliantly merry one.  The cake had a hunt in sugar all round it, and the appropriate motto, “Hip, hip, hurrah!” and people tried to be hilarious; but with that awful shock thrilling on everybody’s nerves we only succeeded in being noisy, though, as we were assured, there was no cause for alarm or grief.  The dog had been tied up on suspicion, and had bitten nothing but one cat, which it had killed.  Yet surely grave thankfulness would have been better for us all, as well as more comfortable than loud witticisms and excited laughter.  I looked at the two or three clerical members of the clan and wondered at them.

When the moment for healths came, the bride called to her brother, the head of the house, by his pleasing name of Baby, and sent him to fetch Harold, whom he brought back with him.  Dora was sound asleep, they said, and room was made for Harold in the bridal neighbourhood in time to hear the baronet, who had married a Horsman of the last generation, propose the health of the bride with all the conventional phrases, and of the bridegroom, as a gentleman who, from his first arrival, had made it his study to maintain the old character of the family, and to distinguish himself by intelligent care for the welfare of his tenants, &c., &c.

Hippolyta must have longed to make the speech in return.  We could see her prompting her husband, and, by means of imitations of Lord Erymanth, he got through pretty well with his gracious acceptance of all the praises.