Within twelve hours the rough men walking about the house at their pleasure, in muddy shoes, with hats on their heads, and smelling of beer and gin, stripped from St. Bevis’s, as bailiffs had done more than once already, every article that would lift. They even put profane hands on some of Lady Bell’s fragile performances of fan-handles and card-boxes. The men included in their sweep, as they had not included on former occasions, the very wearing apparel of the heads of the family. Furniture and clothing were piled and stuffed into waggons brought round for the purpose under the portico, to be driven off and have their contents sold in the market-place of Cleveburgh. Squire Godwin, who was not liable to personal arrest because of the seat in Parliament which he, his father, and grandfather had held since the Long Parliament and the Charleses, and Mrs. Die, were left like one of Hogarth’s couples—only this couple were used to the extremity, and it did not discompose them—sitting desolate among a few heirlooms of old pictures, plate, and jewels. The brother and sister and their household were without changes of clothes, without beds to lie down upon, without vessels out of which to eat such victuals as they could procure; while Mrs. Kitty, Mr. Sneyd, and Mr. Greenwood, were hurrying here and there, on foot and on horseback, exerting themselves frantically to collect fresh necessaries. Squire Trevor pulled out a bundle of bank-notes from his pocket-book, and put them uncounted into Mrs. Kitty’s hand. Lady Bell saw the deed from the windowrecess in which she was standing, shivering with agitation. She came out and instantly acted on it. “Squire Trevor,” she declared, “I for one cannot consent that my friends and I shall live on your charity, while I will not marry you. I will marry you, sir, now, when you please.” He turned briskly. “So, you’ve come to your senses, my lady,” he remarked drily; “I am glad to hear it;” and he took her at her word. Need one say that she hated him the more for so taking her, and that she repented of her word the moment it was spoken? Lady Bell was married within a few days, as soon as Mrs. Kitty could repair in a decent manner, by Mr. Trevor’s bounty, the destruction at St. Bevis’s. On the morning of her marriage-day Lady Bell stood, for the last time, at the parlour window, looking out on the prospect which had claimed her on her arrival, and had since become familiar and almost home-like. It was a soft summer rain—so soft that the rooks were cawing and the blackbirds singing through the wet, as if they knew how the corn was sprouting, and the fruit germs, from which the blossoms were falling, were setting in the genial, timely moisture. The very fragment of the great house, which one man had begun, but no man would finish, because beams and copestones had been launched away on horses’ heels, and rattled down with throws of the dice—seemed as if it were wept upon by the patient sky’s purifying tears.