u think, nor has it had
any existence for six years. I was young then." "Very young, poor
boy!" she said with her old indulgent smile. He made the same brief
explanation to Chatty, but Chatty had no understanding whatever of what
the words meant and took no notice. If she thought of it at all she
thought it was something about money, to her a matter of the most
complete indifference. And so everything became bustle and commotion,
and the preparations for the wedding were put in hand at once. The
atmosphere was full of congratulations, of blushes and wreathed smiles.
"Marriage is certainly contagious; when it once begins in a family, one
never knows where it will stop," the neighbours said: and some thought
Mrs. Warrender much to be felicitated on getting all her young people
settled; and some, much to be condoled with on losing her last girl just
as she had settled down. But these last were in the minority, for to get
rid of your daughters is a well understood advantage, which commends
itself to the meanest capacity.

It was arranged for the convenience of everybody that the wedding was
to take place in London. Dick's relations were legion, and to stow them
away in the Dower house at Highcombe, or even to find room to give
them a sandwich and a glass of wine, let alone a breakfast, after the
ceremony, was impossible. Dick himself was particularly urgent about
this particular, he could not have told why, whether from a foreboding
of disturbance or some other incomprehensible reason. But as for
disturbance, there was no possibility of that. Every evil thing that
could have interfered had been exorcised and lost its power. There was
nothing in his way; nothing to alarm or trouble, but only general
approval and the satisfaction of everybody concerned.

CHAPTER XLII.

Lizzie Hampson heard, like everybody in the village, of what was about
to happen. Miss Chatty was going to be married. At first all that was
known was that the bridegroom was a gentleman from London, which in
those days was a description imposing to rustics. He was a gentleman
who had once been visiting at the Rectory, who had been seen in the
rector's pew at church, and walking about the village, and on the road
to the Warren. Many of the village gossips remembered, or thought they
remembered, to have seen him, and they said to each other, with a
natural enjoyment of a love story which never fails in women, that no
doubt that was when "it was all ma