long as ever my dearest
father wants me!"

"In Heaven's name!" roars the General, "tell me what has happened?"

What had happened was, that George Esmond Warrington and Theodosia
Lambert had been married in Southwark that morning, their banns having
been duly called in the church of a certain friend of the Reverend Mr.
Sampson.

CHAPTER LXXIX. Containing both Comedy and Tragedy

We, who had been active in the guilty scene of the morning, felt trebly
guilty when we saw the effect which our conduct had produced upon him,
who, of all others, we loved and respected. The shock to the good man
was strange, and pitiful to us to witness who had administered it. The
child of his heart had deceived and disobeyed him--I declare I think, my
dear, now, we would not or could not do it over again; his whole family
had entered into a league against him. Dear, kind friend and father!
We know thou hast pardoned our wrong--in the Heaven where thou dwellest
amongst purified spirits who learned on earth how to love and pardon! To
love and forgive were easy duties with that man. Beneficence was natural
to him, and a sweet, smiling humility; and to wound either was to be
savage and brutal, as to torture a child, or strike blows at a nursing
woman. The deed done, all we guilty ones grovelled in the earth, before
the man we had injured. I pass over the scenes of forgiveness, of
reconciliation, of common worship together, of final separation when the
good man departed to his government, and the ship sailed away before us,
leaving me and Theo on the shore. We stood there hand in hand, horribly
abashed, silent, and guilty. My wife did not come to me till her father
went: in the interval between the ceremony of our marriage and his
departure, she had remained at home, occupying her old place by her
father, and bed by her sister's side: he as kind as ever, but the women
almost speechless among themselves; Aunt Lambert, for once, unkind
and fretful in her temper; and little Hetty feverish and strange, and
saying, "I wish we were gone. I wish we were gone." Though admitted to
the house, and forgiven, I slunk away during those last days, and only
saw my wife for a minute or two in the street, or with her family. She
was not mine till they were gone. We went to Winchester and Hampton
for what may be called our wedding. It was but a dismal business. For a
while we felt utterly lonely: and of our dear father as if we had buried
him, or drove