love,
with some little touch of affection. But to this view of the case
Lady Alexandrina had demurred. The ogre in question was not only her
parent, but was also a noble peer, and she could not agree to any
arrangement by which their future connection with the earl, and with
nobility in general, might be endangered. Her parent, doubtless, was
an ogre, and in his ogreship could make himself very terrible to
those near him; but then might it not be better for them to be near
to an earl who was an ogre, than not to be near to any earl at all?
She had therefore signified to Crosbie that the ogre must be endured.

But, nevertheless, it was a great thing to be rid of him on that
happy occasion. He would have said very dreadful things,--things so
dreadful that there might have been a question whether the bridegroom
could have borne them. Since he had heard of Crosbie's accident at
the railway station, he had constantly talked with fiendish glee of
the beating which had been administered to his son-in-law. Lady de
Courcy in taking Crosbie's part, and maintaining that the match was
fitting for her daughter, had ventured to declare before her husband
that Crosbie was a man of fashion, and the earl would now ask, with a
loathsome grin, whether the bridegroom's fashion had been improved by
his little adventure at Paddington. Crosbie, to whom all this was not
repeated, would have preferred a wedding in the country. But the
countess and Lady Alexandrina knew better.

The earl had strictly interdicted any expenditure, and the countess
had of necessity construed this as forbidding any unnecessary
expense. "To marry a girl without any immediate cost was a thing
which nobody could understand," as the countess remarked to her
eldest daughter.

"I would really spend as little as possible," Lady Amelia had
answered. "You see, mamma, there are circumstances about it which one
doesn't wish to have talked about just at present. There's the story
of that girl,--and then that fracas at the station. I really think
it ought to be as quiet as possible." The good sense of Lady Amelia
was not to be disputed, as her mother acknowledged. But then if
the marriage were managed in any notoriously quiet way, the very
notoriety of that quiet would be as dangerous as an attempt at loud
glory. "But it won't cost as much," said Amelia. And thus it had been
resolved that the wedding should be very quiet.

To this Crosbie had assented very willingly, though