right in declaring that my Lady would be the death of him.  Lucas could manage her, and kept her well-behaved and even polite, but Armine was so young and so deferential that she treated him even worse than she did her first victim!  She had begun by insisting on a quarter’s notice or the forfeiture of the salary, as long as she thought £25 was of vital importance to Allen, but as soon as she discovered that the young lady was a great heiress, she became most unedifyingly civil, called in great state in Collingwood Street, and went about boasting of having patronised a sort of prince in disguise.

Meantime Dr. Ruthven’s offer seemed left in abeyance.  Colonel Brownlow had all his son’s scruples, and more than his indignation at Lucas’s folly in hesitating; and John was so sure that he ought not to accept the proposal, that he would not stir in the matter, nor mention it to Sydney.  At last Lucas acted on his own responsibility, and had an interview with Dr. Ruthven, in which he declined the offer for himself, but made it known that his cousin was not only brother to the beautiful Lady Fordham who had been met in Collingwood Street, but was engaged to Lord Fordham’s sister.  At which connection the fashionable physician rubbed his hands with so much glee, that Jock was the more glad not to have to hunt in couples with him.

The magnificent wedding-dress had been stopped by telegram, just as it was packed for New York, and was despatched to Belforest.  Mrs. Wakefield undertook the task imposed upon her, and the wedding was to be grand enough to challenge attention, and not be liable to the accusation of being done in a corner.  It might be called hasty, for only a month would have passed since Elvira’s arrival, before her wedding-day; but this was by her own earnest wish.  She made it no secret that she should never cease to be nervous till she was Allen Brownlow’s wife, even though a letter to her cousins at River Hollow had removed all fear of pursuit by Mrs. Gould; she seemed bent on remaining at New York, and complained loudly of “the ungrateful girl,” whose personal belongings she retained by way of compensation.

It would have been too much to expect that Elvira should be a wise and clever woman, but she had really learnt to be an affectionate one, and in the school of adversity had parted with much of her selfish petulance and arrogance.  Allen, whose love had always been blindly tender, more like a woman’s or a parent’s love than that of an ordinary lover, was rapturous at the response he at last received.  At the same time, he knew her too well to expect from her intellectual companionship, and would be quite content with what she could give.

They were both of them chastened and elevated in tone by their five years’ discipline.

The night before the party went down to Belforest, where they were to meet the Evelyns, Allen lingered with his mother after all the rest had gone upstairs.