to be
kept for August warmth--as once before when there he caught a bad
catarrh of the chest through this imprudence.

Lady Tilchester is coming down from London in a special train on
purpose to grace our bridal ceremony. She has sent me the prettiest
brooch and such a nice letter.

I hope she will be a consolation in the future. For me life must be a
thing of waking in the morning, and eating and drinking, and taking
exercise, and going to bed again, and deadening all emotions, or
else I feel sure I shall get a dreadful disease I once read about
in an American paper Hephzibah takes in. It is called "spontaneous
combustion," and it said in the paper that a man caught it from having
got into a compressed state of heat and rage for weeks, and it made
him burst up at last into flames like an exploding shell.

Well, at all events, I have kept my word, and grandmamma is content
with me.

Miss Hoad--I shall have to call her Amelia now--is enchanted with the
whole entertainment. She is to be the only bridesmaid, and has chosen
the dress herself. It is coffee lace with a mustard-yellow sash. It
mill match her complexion. And Augustus is presenting her with a
huge bouquet, no doubt of the cauliflower shape, like my famous one,
besides a diamond-and-ruby watch.

I wonder if Sir Antony will be at the wedding--he was asked.

The Marquis de Rochermont will give me away--grandmamma is too feeble
now to stand. The ceremony is to be in the village church here, and
the choir, composed of village youths unacquainted with a note of
music, is to meet us at the lich-gate and precede us up the aisle,
singing an encouraging wedding-hymn, while school-children spread
forced white roses, provided by the Tilchester rose-growers.

Augustus explained that patronizing local resources like this will all
come in useful when he stands for Parliament later on.

Grandmamma stipulated that there should be no wedding feast, her
health and our small house being sufficient excuse. It is a great
disappointment to Mrs. Gurrage, I am sure, but we go away to Paris
as soon as I can change my dress after the church ceremony.

Think of it! This time to-morrow my name will be Gurrage! And Augustus
will have the right to--Merciful God! stop my heart from beating
in this sickening fashion, and let me remember the motto of my
race--"_Sans bruit_."

Oh, grandmamma, if I could go on your journey with you! The first jump
out into the dark might be fearful,