Stoneborough; he would bring down all sorts of gossip on his
courtship, he would worry Ethel, and take care she finished nobody's
education. What did Blanche want with more education? She knew
enough for him. Couldn't Ethel be satisfied with Aubrey and
Gertrude? or he dared say she might have Mary too, if she was
insatiable. If Dr. May was so unnatural as to forbid him to hang
about the house, why, he would take rooms at the Swan. In fact, as
Dr. May observed, he treated him to a modern red-haired Scotch
version of 'Make me a willow cabin at your gate;' and as he heartily
loved Hector and entirely trusted him, and Blanche's pretty head was
a wise and prudent one, what was the use of keeping the poor lad
unsettled?

So Mrs. Rivers, the eldest sister and the member's wife, had come to
arrange matters and help Ethel, and a very brilliant wedding it had
been. Blanche was too entirely at home with Hector for flutterings
or agitations, and was too peacefully happy for grief at the
separation, which completed the destiny that she had always seen
before her. She was a picture of a bride; and when she and Hector
hung round the Doctor, insisting that Edinburgh should be the first
place they should visit, and calling forth minute directions for
their pilgrimage to the scenes of his youth, promising to come home
and tell him all, no wonder he felt himself rather gaining a child
than losing one. He was very bright and happy; and no one but Ethel
understood how all the time there was a sensation that the present
was but a strange dreamy parody of that marriage which had been the
theme of earlier hopes.

The wedding had taken place shortly after Easter; and immediately
after, the Rivers family had departed for London, and Tom May had