the next season invited to Eaton Square; there the
mischief, if mischief it was, was done; and Elsley and Lucia started
in life upon two hundred a year. He had inherited some fifty of his
own; she had about a hundred and fifty, which, indeed, was not yet
her own by right; but little Scoutbush (who was her sole surviving
guardian) behaved on the whole very well for a young gentleman of
twenty-two, in a state of fury and astonishment. The old Lord had,
wisely enough, settled in his will that Lucia was to enjoy the
interest of her fortune from the time that she came out, provided she
did not marry without her guardian's leave; and Scoutbush, to avoid
esclandre and misery, thought it as well to waive the proviso, and
paid her her dividends as usual.

But how had she contrived to marry at all without his leave? That is
an ugly question. I will not say that she had told a falsehood,
or that Elsley had forsworn himself when he got the licence: but
certainly both of them were guilty of something very like a white lie,
when they declared that Lucia had the consent of her sole surviving
guardian, on the strength of an half-angry, half-jesting expression of
Scoutbush's that she might marry whom she chose, provided she did not
plague him. In the first triumph of success and intoxication of wedded
bliss, Lucia had written him a saucy letter, reminding him of his
permission, and saying that she had taken him at his word: but her
conscience smote her; and Elsley's smote him likewise; and smote him
all the more, because he had been married under a false name, a fact
which might have ugly consequences in law which he did not like to
contemplate. To do him justice, he had been half-a-dozen times during
his courtship on the point of telling Lucia his real name and
history. Happy for him had he done so, whatever might have been the
consequences: but he wanted moral courage; the hideous sound of Briggs
had become horrible to him; and once his foolish heart was frightened
away from honesty, just as honesty was on the point of conquering, by
old Lady Knockdown's saying that she could never have married a man
with an ugly name, or let Lucia marry one.

"Conceive becoming Mrs. Natty Bumppo, me dear, even for twenty
thousand a year. If you could summon up courage to do the deed, I
couldn't summon up courage to continue my correspondence with ye."

Elsley knew that that was a lie; that the old lady would have let her
marry the most triumphant