twenty-one, Dr. Grey married Christian Oakley.

But until within a few weeks ago she herself had had no idea of the
kind. She intensely respected him; her gratitude for his fatherly care
and kindness was almost boundless; but marrying him, or marrying at
all, was quite foreign to her thoughts. How things had come about even
yet she could hardly remember or comprehend. All was a perfect
dream. It seemed another person, and not she, who was suddenly
changed from Mrs. Ferguson's poor governess, without a friend or
relative in the wide world, to the wife of the Master of Saint Bede's.

That she could have married, or been thought to have married him, for
aught but his own good and generous self, or that the mastership of
Saint Bede's, his easy income, and his high reputation had any thing to
do with it, never once crossed her imagination. She was so simple; her
forlorn, shut-up, unhappy life had kept her, if wildly romantic, so
intensely, childishly true, that, whatever objections she had to Dr.
Grey's offer, the idea that this could form one of them--that any one
could suspect her--her, Christian Oakley--of marrying for money or for
a home, did not occur to her for an instant. He saw that, this lover,
who, from his many years of seniority, and the experience of a
somewhat hard life, looked right down into the depths of the girl's
perplexed, troubled, passionate, innocent heart, and he was not afraid.
Though she told him quite plainly that she felt for him not love, but
only affection and gratitude, he had simply said, with his own tender
smile, "Never mind--I love you;" and married her.

As she stood in her white dress, white shawl, white bonnet--all as plain
as possible, but still pure bridal white, contrasted strongly with the
glaring colors of that drawing-room over the shop, which Poor Mrs.