uncovered could be mended in half-an-
hour. He would return on Saturday night at latest, but as the hour would
probably be far advanced, he would ask her to meet him by slipping out of
the house to the tower any time during service on Sunday morning, when
there would be few persons about likely to observe them. Meanwhile he
might provisionally state that their best course in the emergency would
be, instead of confessing to anybody that there had already been a
solemnization of marriage between them, to arrange their re-marriage in
as open a manner as possible--as if it were the just-reached climax of a
sudden affection, instead of a harking back to an old departure--prefacing
it by a public announcement in the usual way.

This plan of approaching their second union with all the show and
circumstance of a new thing, recommended itself to her strongly, but for
one objection--that by such a course the wedding could not, without
appearing like an act of unseemly haste, take place so quickly as she
desired for her own moral satisfaction. It might take place somewhat
early, say in the course of a month or two, without bringing down upon
her the charge of levity; for Sir Blount, a notoriously unkind husband,
had been out of her sight four years, and in his grave nearly one. But
what she naturally desired was that there should be no more delay than
was positively necessary for obtaining a new license--two or three days
at longest; and in view of this celerity it was next to impossible to
make due preparation for a wedding of ordinary publicity, performed in
her own church, from her own house, with a feast and amusements for the
villagers, a tea for the school children, a bonfire, and other of those
proclamatory accessories which, by meeting wonder half-way, deprive it of
much of its intensity. It must be admitted, too, that she even now
shrank from the shock of surprise that would inevitably be caused by her
openly taking for husband such a mere youth of no position as Swithin
still appeared, notwithstanding that in years he was by this time within
a trifle of one-and-twenty.

The straightforward course had, nevertheless, so much to recommend it, so
well avoided the disadvantage of future revelation which a private
repetition of the ceremony would entail, that assuming she could depend
upon Swithin, as she knew she could do, good sense counselled its serious
consideration.

She became more composed at her queer situation