I excused myself, as did my wife, from being present at the wedding; but everything, I afterwards heard, passed off with great _éclat_. The bridegroom was all fervor and obsequiousness; the bride all bashfulness and beauty. The "happy pair," I saw by the afternoon newspapers, were to pass the honeymoon at Mr. Harlowe's seat, Fairdown Park. The evening of the marriage-day was anything, I remember, but a pleasant one to me. I reached home by no means hilariously disposed, where I was greeted, by way of revival, with the intelligence that my wife, after listening with great energy to Lady Maldon's description of the wedding festivities for two tremendous hours, had at last been relieved by copious hysteria, and that Mary and Kate were in a fair way--if the exploit could be accomplished by perseverance--of crying themselves to sleep. These were our bridal compliments; much more flattering, I imagine, if not quite so honey-accented, as the courtly phrases with which the votaries and the victims of Hymen are alike usually greeted.
Time, business, worldly hopes and cares, the triumphs and defeats of an exciting profession, gradually weakened the impression made upon me by the gentle virtues of Edith Willoughby; and when, about fifteen months after the wedding, my wife informed me that she had been accosted by Mrs. Harlowe at a shop in Bond Street, my first feeling was one of surprise, not untinged with resentment, for what I deemed her ungrateful neglect.
"I thought perhaps she might have forgotten your features, as she evidently has our address."
"If you had seen," replied my wife, "how pale, how cold, how utterly desolate she looked, you would think less hardly of her. As soon as she observed me, a slight scream escaped her; and then she glanced eagerly and tremblingly around like a startled fawn. Her husband had passed out of the shop to give, I think, some direction to the coachman. She tottered towards me, and clasping me in her arms, burst into a passion of tears. "Oh, why--why," I asked as soon as I could speak, "why have you not written to us?" "I dared not!" she gasped. "But oh tell me, do you--does your husband remember me with kindness? Can I still reckon on his protection--his support?" I assured her you would receive her as your own child: the whispered words had barely passed my lips, when Mr. Harlowe, who had swiftly approached us unperceived, said, "Madam, the carriage waits." His stern, pitiless eye glanced from his wife to me, and stiffly bowing, he said, "Excuse me for interrupting your conversation; but time presses. Good-day." A minute afterwards, the carriage drove off."