at
all events he ought to have let people know that he was a--that he was
not an unmarried man."

Chatty trembled a little at these words. She did not like him to be
blamed, but so far as this was concerned she could not deny that he was
in the wrong. It was the foundation of all. Had it been known that he
was or had been married, she would not have given him her love. But at
this Chatty flushed deep, and felt that it was a cruel suggestion. To
find that she was not married was an endless pain to her, which still
she could scarcely understand. But not to have loved him! Poor Dick! To
have done him that wrong over and above all the rest, he who had been so
much wronged and injured! No, no, neither for him nor for herself could
it be anything but profane to wish that. Not to have loved him! Chatty's
life seemed all to sink into gray at the thought.

"At all events," she said, returning to those easier outsides of things
in which the greatest events have a humble covering, and looking again
at her pretty gowns, "they can wait, poor things, to see what will
happen. If it should so be, as that it never comes right----"

"Oh, Chatty, my poor dear."

"Life seems so uncertain," said Chatty, in her new-born wisdom. "It is
so impossible to tell what may happen, or what a day may bring forth. I
think I never can be very sure of anything now. And if it never should
come right, they shall just stay in the boxes, mother. I could not have
the heart to wear them." She put her hand over them caressingly, and
patted and pressed them down into the corners. "It seems a little sad
to see them there, doesn't it, mamma, and I in my old gray frock?" The
tears were in her eyes, but she looked up at Mrs. Warrender with a little
soft laugh at herself, and at the little tragedy, or at least the
suspended drama, laid up with something that was half pathetic, half
ludicrous, in the wedding clothes.

Chatty suffered herself to be taken abroad without any very strong
opinion of her own. She would have been content to adopt Minnie's way,
to go back to Highcombe and "live it down," though indeed she was
unconscious of scandal, or of the necessity of living down anything.
There were some aspects of the case in which she would have preferred
that,--to live on quietly day by day, looking for news of him, expecting
what was to come. But there was much to be said on the other hand for
her mother's plan, and Chatty now, as at all times, was glad to do w