Hitherto his life has been unclouded,--has been all sunshine and happy summer and glad with laughter. Now a dark veil hangs over it, threatening to deaden all things and dim the brightness of his "golden hours." "He who hath most of heart knows most of sorrow." To Dorian, to be wroth with those he loves is, indeed, a sort of madness that affects his heart, if not his brain. He frowns as he strides discontentedly onward through the fast-falling night: and then all at once a thought comes to him--a fair vision seems to rise almost in his path--that calms him and dulls all resentful memories. It is Georgie,--his love, his darling! She, at least, will be true to him. He will teach her so to love him that no light winds of scandal shall have power to shake her faith. Surely a heart filled with dreams of her should harbor no miserable thoughts. He smiles again; his steps grow lighter! he is once more the Dorian of old; he will--he must--be, of necessity, utterly happy with her beside him during all the life that is to come. Alas that human hopes should prove so often vain! CHAPTER XXVII. "Tis now the summer of your youth; time has not cropt the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them."--_The Gamester._ The wedding--a very private one--goes off charmingly. The day breaks calm, smilingly, rich with beauty. "Lovely are the opening eyelids of the morn." Georgie, in her wedding garments, looking like some pale white lily, is indeed "passing fair." She is almost too pallid, but the very pallor adds to the extreme purity and childishness of her beauty, and makes the gazer confident "there's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple." Dorian, tall and handsome, and unmistakably content, seems a very fit guardian for so fragile a flower. Of course the marriage gives rise to much comment in the county, Branscombe being direct heir to the Sartoris title, and presumably the future possessor of all his uncle's private wealth. That he should marry a mere governess, a positive nobody, horrifies the county, and makes its shrug its comfortable shoulders and give way to more malicious talk than is at all necessary. With some, the pretty bride is an adventuress, and, indeed,--in the very softest of soft whispers, and with a gentle rustling of indignant skirts,--not _altogether_ as correct as she might be. There are a few who choose to believe her of good family, but "awfully out-at-elbows, don't you know;" a still fewer who declare she is charming all round and fit for anything; and hardly one who does not consider her, at heart, fortunate and designing.