But fate did not intend that either of them should forget that summer Sunday when "all in the blue unclouded weather" they looked forward to the life that they were beginning together, in a world that seemed to them both very good, with the Heavenly City in a rainbow-tinted mist, far--far ahead of them. CHAPTER NINE. TONY. The wedding was fixed for the middle of July, and, in the middle of June, Lucian went to Toppings to arrange for having it prepared for the reception of his bride. His long minority had left him with plenty of ready money; but neither he nor Amethyst had grown-up sufficiently to have much desire for house-decoration of an aesthetic kind. They were much more full of the long foreign tour, which was to follow their marriage, than of the details of their future house-keeping. He was also obliged to pay a visit to some elderly relations in his own county, so that he was absent from Cleverley for nearly a fortnight. Amethyst meanwhile was free to give her mind to her wedding garments, which delighted Lady Haredale even more than the bride herself. Money or credit had been found for the trousseau, and Amethyst was too inexperienced to know that it was both very costly, and rather inadequate. A visit, in the course of the wedding tour, was to be paid to Miss Haredale at Lausanne, where she was spending the summer, and Amethyst had few anticipations more delightful than that of showing her Lucian to "auntie," whose congratulations had been full of incredulous pleasure. In the meantime, Lady Haredale had been as sympathetic as a girl, promoting the love-idyll in every possible way, and devising the loveliest and most original costumes for her daughter. Amethyst set her own girlish fancy on an "amethyst" velvet, which she considered suitable to a young married lady, and felt would be becoming to herself; but she cared most to have her riding habit exactly what Lucian thought correct, and to choose hats of the shapes and colours which he admired. She went to London with Lady Haredale for a few days during his absence, to complete these arrangements, and there, in the brief intervals when her mind was not taken up with her lover's letters, or with the engrossing business of the trousseau, she fancied that Lady Haredale was less cheery and light-hearted than usual. Her father, who was very little at Cleverley, met them in London, and disappointed her by his want of interest in her prospects, and by the captious, irritable annoyance with which he turned off any mention of the wedding. She returned to Cleverley with her mother, while Lucian was still absent, and found there Major Fowler, who had, he said, "been backwards and forwards" during Lady Haredale's absence. Amethyst's first view of the great "Tony" had been that he was a middle-aged gentleman, an uninteresting but worthy family friend.