she understood why Emma's old mother had had to die
alone in a little cottage away in Northumberland; Emma, good soul,
being too devoted to her mistress to ask for the necessary week, in
order to go home and nurse her mother. Emma had seemed a broken woman,
ever since; and Christobel understood now the impossibility of any one
ever asking Miss Ann for a thing which Miss Ann had made up her mind
not to grant.

She and the Professor now became puppets in Miss Ann's delicate hands.
Miss Ann lay upon her couch, and pulled the wires. The Professor
danced, because he had not the discernment to know he was dancing; Miss
Charteris, because she had not the heart to resist. The Boy having
gone out of her life, nothing seemed to matter. It was her duty to
marry the Professor, and there is nothing to be gained by the
postponement of duty.

But it was Miss Ann who insisted on the wedding taking place within a
week. It was Miss Ann who reminded them that, the Long Vacation having
just commenced, the Professor could easily be away, and there were
researches connected with his Encyclopedia which it was of the utmost
importance he should immediately make in the museums and libraries of
Brussels. It was Miss Ann who insisted upon a special licence being
obtained, and who overruled Christobel's desire to be married by her
brother, the bishop. Miss Ann had become quite hysterical at the idea
of the bishop being brought back from a tour he was making in Ireland,
and Christobel yielded the more readily, because her brother's arrival
would undoubtedly have meant Mollie's; and Mollie's presence, even if
she refrained from protest and expostulation, would have brought such
poignant memories of the Boy.

So it came to pass, with a queer sense of the whole thing being
dream-like and unreal, that Miss Charteris--who should have had the
most crowded and most popular wedding in Cambridge--found herself
standing, as a bride, beside the Professor, in an ill-ventilated
church, at ten o'clock in the morning, being married by an old
clergyman she had never seen before, who seemed partially deaf, and
partially blind, and wholly inadequate to the solemn occasion; with
Miss Ann and her faithful Emma, sniffing in a pew on one side; while
Jenkins breathed rather heavily in a pew, on the other. Martha had
flatly refused to attend; and when Miss Charteris sent for her to bid
her good-bye, Martha had appeared, apparently in her worst and most
morose