Margaret Maliphant

								

soft silky hair, and she wore her wedding-dress to-night, without the
slightest regard to the fact that it was made in a somewhat elaborate
fashion of six years back, and was not exactly suited to her figure at
that particular moment. She sat down between mother and Miss Farnham,
and must have been considerably cheered by that lady's remark to the
effect that she looked as if she ought to be in her bed, and that if
she did not retire to it she would most likely soon be in her grave.
I left mother and went up to greet Mary Thorne, who had just come in
with her father. He was a great, strong, florid man, rather shaky about
his h's, but very much the reverse of shaky in any other way; shrewd
and keen as a sharp knife or an east wind.
I don't know that I ever spoke to him but this once in my life. Father
had such an overpowering aversion to him that we were not allowed to
keep even the daughter's acquaintance long after this, but he made that
impression on me: that there was only one soft spot in him, and that
for the motherless girl, who was the only person allowed to contradict
him.
She contradicted him now.
The squire had gone up to receive them bluntly enough, even I could
see; but the squire might be allowed to have an aversion to the man who
was going in as a Radical to contest his Conservative's long-occupied
seat, though indeed I believe his dislike to the manufacturer was
quite as much, because he had bought up one of the old places in the
neighborhood with money earned in business. I fancy the Thornes were
only invited that night as old friends of Frank Forrester's, and I
don't think Frank was thanked for the necessity.
"You must have had a rare job, Broderick, lighting this old place up,"
he was saying as I came up; "all this dark oak, so gloomy looking!"
"Oh, papa, how can you!" laughed his daughter. "Why, it's what
everybody admires; it's the great sight of the whole neighborhood."
"Yes, yes; I know, my dear," answered Mr. Thorne; "you mean to say that
we should like to live here ourselves. Well, yes, I should have bought
the place if it had been in the market, but--"
"But you would have done it up," broke in the squire, bristling all
over; "whereas there's been nothing new in the Manor since--"
He stopped.
I fancied that he was going to say, "Since I brought my bride home;"
but he said, after a pause, "since my father died."
"Well, to be sure, I do like a bit of brightness and color,"
acknowledged Thorne, whose fine house, although in excellent taste,
was decidedly ornate and splendid; "and it is more suited to festal
occasions."
"There, papa, you know nothing about it," declared Mary, emphatically.
"I declare I never saw the Manor look better. Those flags and garlands
are beautiful."
"Oh, my nephew Frank did all that," answered the squire, carelessly;
"he likes that sort of thing."
"Captain Forrester?" repeated the girl, with just a little smile on her