e church, as the ceremony was now concluded, Philip Beaufort
conducted, hand-in-hand, silently along the aisle, his brother's wife.

Leaning on his stick, his cold sneer upon his thin lip, Lord Lilburne
limped, step by step, with the pair, though a little apart from them,
glancing from moment to moment at the face of Philip Beaufort, where he
had hoped to read a grief that he could not detect. Lord Lilburne had
carefully refrained from an interview with Philip till that day, and
he now only came to the wedding as a surgeon goes to an hospital, to
examine a disease he had been told would be great and sore: he was
disappointed. Close behind followed Sidney, radiant with joy, and bloom,
and beauty; and his kind guardian, the tears rolling down his eyes,
murmured blessings as he looked upon him. Mrs. Beaufort had declined
attending the ceremony--her nerves were too weak--but, behind, at a
longer interval, came Robert Beaufort, sober, staid, collected as ever
to outward seeming; but a close observer might have seen that his eye
had lost its habitual complacent cunning, that his step was more
heavy, his stoop more joyless. About his air there was a some thing
crestfallen. The consciousness of acres had passed away from his portly
presence. He was no longer a possessor, but a pensioner. The rich man,
who had decided as he pleased on the happiness of others, was a cipher;
he had ceased to have any interest in anything. What to him the marriage
of his daughter now? Her children would not be the heirs of Beaufort.
As Camilla kindly turned round, and through happy tears waited for his
approach, to clasp his hand, he forced a smile, but it was sickly and
piteous. He longed to creep away, and be alone.

"My father!" said Camilla, in her sweet low voice; and she extricated
herself from Philip, and threw herself on his breast.

"She is a good child," said Robert Beaufort vacantly, and, turning
his dry eyes to the group, he caught instinctively at his customary
commonplaces;--"and a good child, Mr. Sidney, makes a good wife!"

The clergyman bowed as if the compliment were addressed to himself: he
was the only man there whom Robert Beaufort could now deceive.

"My sister," said Philip Beaufort, as once more leaning on his arm, they
paused before the church door, "may Sidney love and prize you as--as
I would have done; and believe me, both of you, I have no regret, no
memory, that wounds me now."

He dropped the hand, and motioned t