hope, but you don't believe. Well, we shall see. And now tell me, sweet, how is the Squire's housekeeper, Mrs. Layburne?"
"Very ill. Indeed, Herrick, I fear the poor soul has not many weeks, or perhaps many days, to live. It is a sad and lonely ending. She shuns all sympathy, and waits for death in a proud silence which has an awful air. Alas, I fear she lacks all the consolations of piety. I have offered to read to her, to pray with her; but she refused with open scorn. She will have nothing to say to Mademoiselle, who is all kindness. Bridget detests her, and yet tries to nurse her and to do all she can to lessen her sufferings: but it is an unthankful office. My father looks miserable, and I think the presence of that dying woman in the house overshadows his life. He has not been to London for weeks. He sits alone in his study, reading or writing, as if he were waiting for Mrs. Layburne's death. Mademoiselle and I have hardly seen him from day to day, yet last year we were all three so happy together. He used always to dine and spend his evenings with us; but now he dines alone, and is shut up in his study till midnight."
The horses were tearing along the London road, past breezy commons and low-wooded hills, between which flashed now and then a distant glimpse of the river – a silvery streak across the gray of the autumn landscape. Herrick put his head out of the coach window once in a quarter of an hour, to survey the road behind him; but there was no sign of pursuit. The chances were that Irene's absence would not be discovered till eight o'clock, the usual breakfast-hour; and it was not yet seven. They had a clear hour before them.
They changed horses at Kingston, and were crossing Wimbledon Common at eight. The strong fresh horses tore down the hill into Wandsworth, and now Herrick felt that his prize was won. From Wandsworth to the ferry between Lambeth and Westminster was but half an hour's drive. The Abbey clock was striking nine as they stepped into the ferry-boat.
A hackney coach was waiting for them on the other side, bespoken by Durnford before he left London on the previous day, a coach which carried them to Curzon Street in a quarter of an hour, and there was Parson Keith in his surplice, ready to begin the ceremony.
How solemn and how sweet the service sounded to those true lovers, as they stood side by side before the communion-table, in the shabby little chapel which was to be the scene of so many a clandestine union, of so many a love-match doomed to end in mutual aversion! But here Fate promised a more consistent future. Here was no transient passion, born but to die, no will-o'-the-wisp love, leading the lovers over swamps and perilous places, to expire in a quagmire, but a pure and steady flame that would light their pathway to the close of life.
Durnford left the chapel with his bride on his arm, half expecting to meet Squire Bosworth on the threshold, just half an hour too late to hinder the marriage. He would be likely to guess that the runaway couple would go straight to Parson Keith. But there was no furious father, only the jarvey nodding on his box, and a handful of vagabonds and idlers demanding largesse from the bridegroom, a scurvy crew who always gathered from the adjacent alleys to stare at the gentry whom Mr. Keith made happy.
"To Lord Lavendale's, Bloomsbury Square," said Herrick; and then when they were seated side by side in the coach, he told Irene how Lavendale had insisted that they should lodge at his house till they had one of their own, and that they were to take as much time as ever they could in finding one.
"He has given me a suite of rooms, where we shall be as much alone as if we had a house all to ourselves," he said.
They found the rooms prepared for them, the servants in attendance, and an excellent breakfast of chicken and iced champagne on the table. Lavendale was discreetly absent. The butler told Mr. Durnford that his lordship was not expected home till the evening.
After breakfast, Durnford proposed that Irene should do a little shopping, and then it occurred to the bride for the first time that all her wardrobe was at Fairmile Court.
"And I am to cost you money at the very beginning!" she said dolefully.
"Dearest, it will be bliss to spend my money in such sweet service."
"Ah, but wait! I have twenty guineas in my purse, which my father gave me a week ago, my quarterly allowance of pocket-money. That will buy all I shall want for the present; and I daresay he will let me have my clothes from Fairmile. However angry he may be, he will scarcely insist upon keeping my clothes."
"It would assuredly be a petty form of resentment. Well, dearest, may I go shopping with you? or would you rather go alone in a chair?"
"I would rather go with you."
"Then we'll just walk quietly into Holborn, as if we were an old married couple."
Irene put on her cloak and hood in front of a Venetian glass, while Herrick walked up and down the room and glanced somewhat uneasily from the windows, expecting the Squire's arrival.
They had breakfasted in a leisurely fashion, and it was now two o'clock. There had been ample time for Mr. Bosworth to go to Parson Keith, and having obtained his information from the parson, who knew the destination of the newly-married couple, to come on to Bloomsbury Square. Yet there was still no sign of pursuit. Nor did anything occur all that afternoon to interrupt the serenity of the bride and bridegroom. They went together to the mercer's and to the milliner's, and Irene made her purchases on a very modest scale, and well within the limits of her pocket-money, while her husband discreetly waited at the door of the shop, and exercised a patience rare after the halcyon days of the honeymoon.
"How good you are to wait for me!" said Irene, as she rejoined him; "shopkeepers are so slow, and they pester one so to buy more than one wants."
"If you were like Mrs. Skerritt, who haunts every sale-room and bids for everything she sees, your catalogue of wants would not be completed half so easily," answered Herrick; "jealous though I am of your absence, I must own you have been vastly quick."
"But pray who is Mrs. Skerritt?" asked Irene. "Stay, she is the lady who was so kind to you. I should like to know her."
"Nay, love, I think it were better not, though there are great ladies who ask her to their houses, and pretend to adore her – Lady Mary Montagu, for instance. But my young wife must choose her friends with the utmost discretion."
"I wish for no friends whom you do not care for," said his bride; "and now, Herrick, when am I to see the new comedy? It is hard that all the town should have admired my husband's play, while I know so little about it."
"Shall we go to Drury Lane this evening?"
"I should love to go."
"Then you shall. Lavendale has hired a box for the run of my play – he always does things in a princely style – and we can have it all to ourselves this evening. 'Twill be our first public appearance as man and wife, and all the town will guess we are married, and will envy me my prize."
They dined, or pretended to dine, at four, and then Lavendale's chariot drove them to Drury Lane.
What a delight it was for Irene to sit by her lover-husband's side, and watch and listen while the story of the play unfolded itself – to hear the audience laugh and applaud at each brisk retort, each humorous or fondly tender fancy! The play was a story of love and lovers, the old, old story which has been telling itself ever since creation, and which yet seems ever new to the actors in it. There were wit and passion and freshness and manly spirit in Herrick's play, but there was not a single indecency; and the older school of wits and scribblers wondered exceedingly how so milk-and-waterish a comedy could take the town. Mrs. Manley, in a dark little box yonder, whispering behind her fan to a superannuated buck in a periwig that reached his knees, protested that the play was the tamest she had ever sat out.
"Tamer
