1J6
WYLDER'S HAJVD.
Wylder what she thought of him it would, perhaps, have
made her more tolerable than she was, for some days after
the arrival of that letter, to other members of the family.
The idea of holding Miss Brandon to this engagement,
proroguing her nuptials from day to day, to convenience
the bridegroom — absent without explanation — was quite
untenable. Fortunately, the marriage, considering tho
antiquity and the territorial position of the two families
who were involved, was to have been a very quiet affair
indeed — no festivities — nothing of the nature of a coun-
ty gala — no concussions of society — a dignified but se-
cluded marriage.
This divested the inevitable dissolution of these high
relations of much of its eclat and ridicule.
Of course there was abundance of talk. Scarce a man
or woman in the shire but had a theory or a story —
sometimes bearing hard on the lady, sometimes on the
gentleman; still it was an abstract breach of promise,
and would have much improved by some outward and
visible sign of disruption and disappointment. Some
concrete pageantries to be abolished and removed; flag-
staffs, for instance, and banners, marquees, pyrotechnic
machinery, and long tiers of rockets, festoons of ever-
greens, triumphal arches with appropriate mottoes, to
come down and hide themselves away, would have been
pleasant to tha many who like a joke, and to the few who
love a sneer.
But there were no such fopperies to hurry off the stage
disconcerted. In the autumnal sun, among the thinning
foliage of the noble trees, Brandon Hall looked solemn,
sad, and magnificent, as usual, with a sort of retrospective
serenity, buried in old-world glories and sorrows, and
heeding little the follies and scandals of the hour.
In the same way Miss Brandon, with Lord and Lady