“Dear boy!” returned Eugene with a smile, “we both thank you heartily. Lizzie, tell them how welcome they are, and that I would be eloquent if I could.”
“There is no need,” said Mr. Milvey. “We know it. Are you better, Mr. Wrayburn?”
“I am much happier,” said Eugene.
“Much better too, I hope?”
Eugene turned his eyes towards Lizzie, as if to spare her, and answered nothing.
Then, they all stood around the bed, and Mr. Milvey, opening his book, began the service; so rarely associated with the shadow of death; so inseparable in the mind from a flush of life and gaiety and hope and health and joy. Bella thought how different from her own sunny little wedding, and wept. Mrs. Milvey overflowed with pity, and wept too. The dolls’ dressmaker, with her hands before her face, wept in her golden bower. Reading in a low clear voice, and bending over Eugene, who kept his eyes upon him, Mr. Milvey did his office with suitable simplicity. As the bridegroom could not move his hand, they touched his fingers with the ring, and so put it on the bride. When the two plighted their troth, she laid her hand on his, and kept it there. When the ceremony was done, and all the rest departed from the room, she drew her arm under his head, and laid her own head down upon the pillow by his side.
“Undraw the curtains, my dear girl,” said Eugene, after a while, “and let us see our wedding-day.”
The sun was rising, and his first rays struck into the room, as she came back, and put her lips to his. “I bless the day!” said Eugene. “I bless the day!” said Lizzie.
“You have made a poor marriage of it, my sweet wife,” said Eugene. “A shattered graceless fellow, stretched at his length here, and next to nothing for you when you are a young widow.”
“I have made the marriage that I would have given all the world to dare to hope for,” she replied.
“You have thrown yourself away,” said Eugene, shaking his head. “But you have followed the treasure of your heart. My justification is, that you had thrown that away first, dear girl!”
“No. I had given it to you.”
“The same thing, my poor Lizzie!”
“Hush! hush! A very different thing.”
There were tears in his eyes, and she besought him to close them. “No,” said Eugene, again shaking his head; “let me look at you, Lizzie, while I can. You brave devoted girl! You heroine!”
Her own eyes filled under his praises. And when he mustered strength to move his wounded head a very little way, and lay it on her bosom, the tears of both fell.
“Lizzie,” said Eugene, after a silence: “when you see me wandering away from this refuge that I have so ill deserved, speak to me by my name, and I think I shall come back.”
“Yes, dear Eugene.”
“There!” he exclaimed, smiling. “I should have gone then, but for that!”
A little while afterwards, when he appeared to be sinking into insensibility, she said, in a calm loving voice: “Eugene, my dear husband!” He immediately answered: “There again! You see how you can recall