, and the mother standing up in the dark corner of her pew
heard her daughter's silver-clear voice as she vowed to devote herself
to her husband. As she heard it, she also devoted herself. When sorrow
should come as sorrow certainly would come, then she would be ready once
again to be a mother to her child. But till that time should come the
wife of John Caldigate would be nothing to her.

She was not content with thinking and resolving that it should be so,
but she declared her intention in so many words to her daughter. For
poor Hester, though she was proud of her husband, this was in truth a
miserable day. Could she have been induced to separate herself
altogether from her mother on the previous night, or even on that
morning, it would have been better, but there was with her that
customary longing for a last word of farewell which has often made so
many of us wretched. And then there was a feeling that, as she was
giving herself away in marriage altogether in opposition to her mother's
counsels, on that very account she owed to her more attached and
increased observance. Therefore, she had arranged with her husband that
when she returned from the banquet to prepare herself for her journey, a
longer absence than usual should be allowed to her;--so that she might
be taken back to Chesterton, and might thus see her mother the last
after saying farewell to all the others. Then the carriage should return
to The Nurseries and he would be ready to step in, and she need not show
herself again, worn out as she would be with the tears and sobbings
which she anticipated.

It all went as it was arranged, but it would have been much better to
arrange it otherwise. The journey to the Grange and back, together with
the time spent in the interview, took an hour,--and the time went very
slowly with the marriage guests. There always comes a period beyond
which it is impossible to be festive. When the bride left the room, the
bridesmaids and other ladies went with her. Then the gentlemen who
remained hardly knew what to do with each other. Old Mr. Bolton was not
jovial on the occasion, and the four brothers hardly knew how to find
subjects for conversation on such an occasion. The bridegroom felt the
hour to be very long, although he consented to play billiards with the
boys; and John Jones, although he did at last escape and find his way up
among the girls, thought that his friend had married himself into a very
sombre family. But a