wife, once suggested to her that even yet it was not too late. 'Of
course I shall marry him,' she said to Mrs. Robert, almost with
indignation, when Mrs. Robert on one occasion almost broke down in her
purpose.

'Dear aunt, indeed, indeed, you need not interfere,' she said to Mrs.
Nicholas. 'If he were all that they have called him, still I would marry
him,' she said to her other aunt,--'because I love him.' And so they all
became astonished at the young girl whom they had reared up among them,
and to understand that whatever might now be their opinions, she would
have her way.

And so it was decided that they should be married on a certain Tuesday
in the middle of December. Early in the morning she was to be brought
down to her aunt's house, there to be decked in her bridal robes, thence
to be taken to the church, then to return for the bridal feast, and from
thence to be taken off by her husband,--to go whither they might list.

Chapter XXI

The Wedding

It was a sad wedding, though everything within the power of Mr. Robert
Bolton was done to make it gay. There was a great breakfast, and all the
Boltons were at last persuaded to be present except Mrs. Bolton and Mrs.
Nicholas. As to Mrs. Nicholas she was hardly even asked. 'Of course we
would be delighted to see Mrs. Nicholas, if she would come,' Mrs. Robert
said to Nicholas himself. But there had been such long-continued and
absolute hostility between the ladies that this was known to be
impossible. In regard to Mrs. Bolton herself, great efforts were made.
Her husband condescended to beg her to consent on this one occasion to
appear among the Philistines. But as the time came nearer she became
more and more firm in her resolution. 'You shall not touch pitch and not
be defiled,' she said. 'You cannot serve God and Mammon.' When the old
man tried to show her that there was no question of Mammon here, she
evaded him, as she always did on such occasions, either by a real or
simulated deficiency of consequent intelligence. She regarded John
Caldigate as being altogether unregenerate, and therefore a man of the
world,--and therefore a disciple of Mammon. She asked him whether he
wanted her to do what she thought to be sinful. 'It is very sinful
hating people as you hate my sons' families,' he said in his wrath. 'No,
Nicholas, I do not hate their families. I certainly do not hate
Margaret, nor yet Fanny;--but I think that they live in opposition to
the Go