was surprised at the ease with which it was all done.  On the Saturday Lady Augustus came, and on the Sunday Lord Augustus.  The parents of course kissed their child, but there was very little said in the way either of congratulation or farewell.  Lord Augustus did have some conversation with Mounser Green, but it all turned on the probability of there being whist in Patagonia.  On the Monday morning they were married, and then Arabella was taken off by the happy bridegroom.

When the ceremony was over it was expected that Lady Augustus should take herself away as quickly as possible, not perhaps on that very afternoon, but at any rate, on the next morning.  As soon as the carriage was gone, she went to her own room and wept bitterly.  It was all done now.  Everything was over.  Though she had quarrelled daily with her daughter for the last twelve years,—­to such an extent lately that no decently civil word ever passed between them,—­still there had been something to interest her.  There had been something to fear and something to hope.  The girl had always had some prospect before her, more or less brilliant.  Her life had had its occupation, and future triumph was possible.  Now it was all over.  The link by which she had been bound to the world was broken.  The Connop Greens and the Smijths would no longer have her, unless it might be on short and special occasions, as a great favour.  She knew that she was an old woman, without money, without blood, and without attraction, whom nobody would ever again desire to see.  She had her things packed up, and herself taken off to London, almost without a word of farewell to the Duchess, telling herself as she went that the world had produced no other people so heartless as the family of the Trefoils.

“I wonder what you will think of Patagonia,” said Mounser Green as he took his bride away.

“I don’t suppose I shall think much.  As far as I can see one place is always like another.”

“But then you will have duties.”

“Not very heavy I hope.”

Then he preached her a sermon, expressing a hope as he went on, that as she was leaving the pleasures of life behind her, she would learn to like the work of life.  “I have found the pleasures very hard,” she said.  He spoke to her of the companion he hoped to find, of the possible children who might be dependent on their mother, of the position which she would hold, and of the manner in which she should fill it.  She, as she listened to him, was almost stunned by the change in the world around her.  She need never again seem to be gay in order that men might be attracted.  She made her promises and made them with an intention of keeping them; but it may, we fear, be doubted whether he was justified in expecting that he could get a wife fit for his purpose out of the school in which Arabella Trefoil had been educated.  The two, however, will pass out of our sight, and we can only hope that he may not be disappointed.