xiety a worn-out look--the look of
excitement, of nights without sleep, much smoke, and, perhaps, much
wine, in his eyes. What a woman feels who has to hand over her spotless
child, the most dear and pure thing upon earth, to a man fresh from
those indulgences and dissipations which never seem harmless, and always
are repellent to a woman, is not to be described. Fortunately the bride
herself, in invincible ignorance and unconsciousness, seldom feels in
that way. To Elinor her lover looked tired about the eyes, which was
very well explained by his night journey, and by the agitation of the
moment. And, indeed, she did not see very much of Phil, who had his
friends with him--his aide-de-camp, Bolsover, and his brother Harry.
These three gentlemen carried an atmosphere of smoke and other scents
with them into the lavender of the Rectory, which was too amazing in
that hemisphere for words, and talked their own talk in the midst
of the fringe of rustics who were their hosts, with a calm which was
extraordinary, breaking into the midst of the Rector's long-winded,
amiable sentences, and talking to each other over Mrs. Hudson's head.
"I say, Dick, don't you remember?" "By Jove, Phil, you are too bad!"
sounded, with many other such expressions and reminders, over the
Rectory party, strictly silent round their own table, trying to make a
courteous remark now and then, but confounded, in their simple country
good manners, by the fine gentlemen. And then there was the dinner-party
at the cottage in the evening, to which Mr. and Mrs. Hudson were invited.
Such a dinner-party! Old Mr. Tatham, who was a country gentleman from
Dorsetshire, with his nice daughter, Mary Tatham, a quiet country young
lady, accustomed, when she went into the world at all, to the serious
young men of the Temple, and John's much-occupied friends, who had their
own asides about cases, and what So-and-So had said in court, but were
much too well-bred before ladies to fall into "shop;" and Mr. and Mrs.
Hudson, who were such as we know them; and the bride's mother, a little
anxious, but always debonair; and Elinor herself, in all the haze and
sweet confusion of the great era which approached so closely. The three
men made the strangest addition that can be conceived to the quiet
guests; but things went better under the discipline of the dinner,
especially as Sir John Huntingtower, who was a Master of the hounds
and an old friend of the Dennistouns, was of the par