On the following morning, at ten o’clock, there was a procession from Miss Stanbury’s house into the Cathedral, which was made entirely on foot; indeed, no assistance could have been given by any carriage, for there is a back entrance to the Cathedral, near to the Lady Chapel, exactly opposite Miss Stanbury’s house.  There were many of the inhabitants of the Close there, to see the procession, and the cathedral bells rang out their peals very merrily.  Brooke, the bridegroom, gave his arm to Miss Stanbury, which was, no doubt, very improper, as he should have appeared in the church as coming from some quite different part of the world.  Then came the bride, hanging on her brother, then two bridesmaids friends of Dorothy’s, living in the town; and, lastly, Priscilla with her mother, for nothing would induce Priscilla to take the part of a bridesmaid.  ’You might as well ask an owl to sing to you,’ she said.  ’And then all the frippery would be thrown away upon me.’  But she stood close to Dorothy, and when the ceremony had been performed, was the first, after Brooke, to kiss her.

Everybody acknowledged that the bride was a winsome bride.  Mrs MacHugh was at the breakfast, and declared afterwards that Dorothy Burgess, as she then was pleased to call her, was a girl very hard to be understood.  ‘She came here,’ said Mrs MacHugh, ’two years ago, a plain, silent, shy, dowdy young woman, and we all said that Miss Stanbury would be tired of her in a week.  There has never come a time in which there was any visible difference in her, and now she is one of our city beauties, with plenty to say to everybody, with a fortune in one pocket and her aunt in the other, and everybody is saying what a fortunate fellow Brooke Burgess is to get her.  In a year or two she’ll be at the top of everything in the city, and will make her way in the county too.’

The compiler of this history begs to add his opinion to that of ‘everybody,’ as quoted above by Mrs MacHugh.  He thinks that Brooke Burgess was a very fortunate fellow to get his wife.

CHAPTER XCVIII

ACQUITTED

During this time, while Hugh was sitting with his love under the oak trees at Monkhams, and Dorothy was being converted into Mrs Brooke Burgess in Exeter Cathedral, Mrs Trevelyan was living with her husband in the cottage at Twickenham.  Her life was dreary enough, and there was but very little of hope in it to make its dreariness supportable.  As often happens in periods of sickness, the single friend who could now be of service to the one or to the other was the doctor.  He came daily to them, and with that quick growth of confidence which medical kindness always inspires, Trevelyan told to this gentleman all the history of his married life and all that Trevelyan told to him he repeated to Trevelyan’s wife.  It may therefore be understood that Trevelyan, between them, was treated like a child.