t--be, of necessity, utterly happy with her beside
him during all the life that is to come.

Alas that human hopes should prove so often vain!

CHAPTER XXVII.

"Tis now the summer of your youth; time has not cropt the
roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed
them."--_The Gamester._

The wedding--a very private one--goes off charmingly. The day breaks
calm, smilingly, rich with beauty. "Lovely are the opening eyelids of
the morn."

Georgie, in her wedding garments, looking like some pale white lily,
is indeed "passing fair." She is almost too pallid, but the very
pallor adds to the extreme purity and childishness of her beauty, and
makes the gazer confident "there's nothing ill can dwell in such a
temple." Dorian, tall and handsome, and unmistakably content, seems a
very fit guardian for so fragile a flower.

Of course the marriage gives rise to much comment in the county,
Branscombe being direct heir to the Sartoris title, and presumably the
future possessor of all his uncle's private wealth. That he should
marry a mere governess, a positive nobody, horrifies the county, and
makes its shrug its comfortable shoulders and give way to more
malicious talk than is at all necessary. With some, the pretty bride
is an adventuress, and, indeed,--in the very softest of soft whispers,
and with a gentle rustling of indignant skirts,--not _altogether_ as
correct as she might be. There are a few who choose to believe her of
good family, but "awfully out-at-elbows, don't you know;" a still
fewer who declare she is charming all round and fit for anything; and
hardly one who does not consider her, at heart, fortunate and
designing.

One or two rash and unsophisticated girls venture on the supposition
that perhaps, after all, it is a real _bona fide_ love-match, and make
the still bolder suggestion that a governess may have a heart as well
as other people. But these silly children are pushed out of sight, and
very sensibly pooh-poohed, and are told, with a little clever laugh,
that they "are quite too sweet, and quite dear babies, and they must
try and keep on thinking all that sort of pretty rubbish as long as
ever they can. It is so successful, and so very taking nowadays."

Dorian is regarded as an infatuated, misguided young man, who should
never have been allowed out without a keeper. Such a disgraceful
flinging away of opportunities, and birth, and position, to marry a
woman so utterly