As they were driving through the silent bush, in the dusk of that autumn day, and the bridegroom, wrapped in his fur-collared overcoat, was musing not very happily upon the success that had crowned his long-cherished hopes and plans, his young wife slipped her hand under his arm, and laid her cheek upon his coat-sleeve. "Graham," she whispered softly. He turned round quickly, and took her in his arms. It was the first time she had spoken his name and offered him a caress voluntarily, and he was greatly touched and cheered. "Will you forgive me?" she said, not shrinking away from his embrace, but creeping into it as she had never done before. "And, oh, will you love me, in spite of it all?" "Love you!" he echoed, tenderly. "My sweet, I have always loved you more than anybody in the world, and I always shall. It will not be on _my_ side that love will be wanting." She said no more, but she lay still, with her head in its soft little sealskin cap on his breast, as if she liked to feel his arms about her. It was so new to him, and so immeasurably delightful. He had never expected to feel happier (even on his wedding day) than he felt now, with his best beloved, who had been so impracticable, his own at last, giving herself up to him in this way. Poor, parasitic little heart, full of spreading tendrils! It was essential to its very existence that it should have _something_ to cling to--which was a view of the case, that happily did not chance to strike him. CHAPTER III. A DISCOVERY. There was a great ball at Toorak on the night of the wedding, and like all the nuptial ceremonies, it went off with great _eclat_. Mrs. Hardy recovered her serenity very quickly after the bride's departure, and appeared in the evening, clothed in smiles and sapphire velvet, looking the proud woman that it was generally conceded she had a right to be. Lucilla, at home for the first time since her sister Laura's wedding, and since her accession to the dignities of maternity, and carrying herself very prettily as a personage of consequence amongst the unmarried friends of her girlhood, looked extremely well and very happy, and reflected great honour upon her family in a variety of ways. Beatrice also was unusually brilliant, not only in her personal appearance, but in her mode of discharging the duties of the occasion--a little too much so, indeed, if anything. Some elderly ladies, and a very few young men, were subsequently heard to express an opinion that she carried that sharp and satirical manner of hers to an excess that was unbecoming in a person of her sex and years, even if she had married money and become a leader of fashion. A little after midnight, these two young women, the one for the sake of her baby, and the other on account of her husband, excused themselves from further attendance on Mrs. Hardy, and drove back to South Yarra, where the Thornleys were staying, carrying their willing lords along with them.