North and South

								
CHAPTER I.

“HASTE TO THE WEDDING.”

    “Wooed and married and a’.”


“Edith!” said Margaret, gently, “Edith!”

But as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep. She lay curled
up on the sofa in the back drawing-room in Harley Street looking very
lovely in her white muslin and blue ribbons. If Titania had ever been
dressed in white muslin and blue ribbons, and had fallen asleep on a
crimson damask sofa in a back drawing-room, Edith might have been taken
for her. Margaret was struck afresh by her cousin’s beauty. They had
grown up together from childhood, and all along Edith had been remarked
upon by every one, except Margaret, for her prettiness; but Margaret had
never thought about it until the last few days, when the prospect of
soon losing her companion seemed to give force to every sweet quality
and charm which Edith possessed. They had been talking about wedding
dresses and wedding ceremonies; and Captain Lennox, and what he had told
Edith about her future life at Corfu, where his regiment was stationed;
and the difficulty of keeping a piano in good tune (a difficulty which
Edith seemed to consider as one of the most formidable that could befall
her in her married life), and what gowns she should want in the visits
to Scotland, which would immediately succeed her marriage; but the
whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy; and Margaret, after a
pause of a few minutes, found, as she fancied, that in spite of the buzz
in the next room, Edith had rolled herself up into a soft ball of muslin
and ribbon, and silken curls, and gone off into a peaceful little
after-dinner nap.

Margaret had been on the point of telling her cousin of some of the
plans and visions which she entertained as to her future life in the
country parsonage, where her father and mother lived; and where her
bright holidays had always been passed, though for the last ten years
her aunt Shaw’s house had been considered as her home. But in default of
a listener, she had to brood over the change in her life silently as
heretofore. It was a happy brooding, although tinged with regret at
being separated for an indefinite time from her gentle aunt and dear
cousin. As she thought of the delight of filling the important post of
only daughter in Helstone parsonage, pieces of the conversation out of
the next room came upon her ears. Her aunt Shaw was talking to the five
or six ladies who had been dining there, and whose husbands were still
in the dining-room. They were the familiar acquaintances of the house;
neighbours whom Mrs. Shaw called friends, because she happened to dine
with them more frequently than with any other people, and because if she
or Edith wanted anything from them, or they from her, they did not
scruple to make a call at each other’s houses before luncheon. These
ladies and their husbands were invited in their capacity of friends, to
eat a farewell dinner in honour of Edith’s approaching marriage. Edith
had rather objected to this arrangement, for Captain Lennox was expected
to arrive by a late train this very evening; but, although she was a
spoiled child, she was too careless and idle to have a very strong will
of her own, and gave way when she found that her mother had absolutely
ordered those extra delicacies of the season which are always supposed
to be efficacious against immoderate grief at farewell dinners. She
contented herself by leaning back in her chair, merely playing with the
food on her plate, and looking grave and absent; while all around her
were enjoying the mots of Mr. Grey, the gentleman who always took the
bottom of the table at Mrs. Shaw’s dinner parties, and asked Edith to
give them some music in the drawing-room. Mr. Grey was particularly
agreeable over this farewell dinner, and the gentlemen staid downstairs
longer than usual. It was very well they did--to judge from the
fragments of conversation which Margaret overheard.

“I suffered too much myself; not that I was not extremely happy with the
poor dear General, but still disparity of age is a drawback; one that I
was resolved Edith should not have to encounter. Of course, without any
maternal partiality, I foresaw that the dear child was likely to marry
early; indeed, I had often said that I was sure she would be married
before she was nineteen. I had quite prophetic feeling when Captain
Lennox”--and here the voice dropped into a whisper, but Margaret could
easily supply the blank. The course of true love in Edith’s case had run
remarkably smooth. Mrs. Shaw had given way to the presentiment, as she
expressed it; and had rather urged on the marriage, although it was
below the expectations which many of Edith’s acquaintances had formed
for her, a young and pretty heiress. But Mrs. Shaw said that her only
child should marry for love,--and sighed emphatically, as if love had
not been her motive for marrying the General. Mrs. Shaw enjoyed the
romance of the present engagement rather more than her daughter. Not but
that Edith was very thoroughly and properly in love; still she would
certainly have preferred a good house in Belgravia, to all the
picturesqueness of the life which Captain Lennox described at Corfu. The
very parts which made Margaret glow as she listened, Edith pretended to
shiver and shudder at; partly for the pleasure she had in being coaxed
out of her dislike by her fond lover, and partly because anything of a
gipsy or make-shift life was really distasteful to her. Yet had any one
come with a fine house, and a fine estate, and a fine title to boot,
Edith would still have clung to Captain Lennox while the temptation
lasted; when it was over, it is possible she might have had little
qualms of ill-concealed regret that Captain Lennox could not have united
in his person everything that was desirable. In this she was but her
mother’s child; who, after deliberately marrying General Shaw with no
warmer feeling than respect for his character and establishment, was
constantly, though quietly, bemoaning her hard lot in being united to

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