ord, now I think of it, I never have. Fanny and I have been
one for ages.'
That evening the sisters arrived from their country home. Micklethwaite
gave up the house to them, and went to a lodging.
It was with no little curiosity that, on the appointed morning, Barfoot
repaired to South Tottenham. He had seen a photograph of Miss Wheatley,
but it dated from seventeen years ago. Standing in her presence, he was
moved with compassion, and with another feeling more rarely excited in
him by a women's face, that of reverential tenderness. Impossible to
recognize in this countenance the features known to him from the
portrait. At three-and-twenty she had possessed a sweet, simple
comeliness on which any man's eye would have rested with pleasure; at
forty she was wrinkled, hollow-cheeked, sallow, indelible weariness
stamped upon her brow and lips. She looked much older than Mary
Barfoot, though they were just of an age. And all this for want of a
little money. The life of a pure, gentle, tender-hearted woman worn
away in hopeless longing and in hard struggle for daily bread. As she
took his hand and thanked him with an exquisite modesty for the present
she had received, Everard felt a lump rise in his throat. He was
ashamed to notice that the years had dealt so unkindly with her; fixing
his look upon her eyes, he gladdened at the gladness which shone in
them, at the soft light which they could still shed forth.
Micklethwaite was probably unconscious of the poor woman's faded
appearance. He had seen her from time to time, and always with the love
which idealizes. In his own pathetic phrase, she was simply a part of
himself; he no more thought of criticizing her features than of
standing before the glass to mark and comment upon his own. It was
enough to glance at him as he took his place beside her, the proudest
and happiest of men. A miracle had been wrought for him; kind fate, in
giving her to his arms, had blotted out those long years of sorrow, and
to-day Fanny was the betrothed of his youth, beautiful in his sight as
when first he looked upon her.
Her sister, younger by five years, had more regular lineaments, but she
too was worn with suffering, and her sightless eyes made it more
distressing to contemplate her. She spoke cheerfully, however, and
laughed with joy in Fanny's happiness. Barfoot pressed both her hands
with the friendliest warmth.
One vehicle conveyed them all to the church, and in half an hour the
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