The Squire addressed Lady Bell Trevor with a little more consideration than he had been wont to bestow on Lady Bell Etheredge, but there remained the echo of the old contempt in the tone of his speech. “So you think to contract a second marriage, madam; well, matrimony is honourable, though I have not tried it on my own account. I am sorry that I cannot say much for the wisdom of the step in this instance, but I do not presume to advise, far less to interfere. It says much for the happiness of the last knot (eh! my Lady Bell?) that you are so keen to tie another.” The one difficulty overcome, the remainder of the scheme was even exceptionally practicable, and circumstances like cards played themselves, as it were, in Captain Fane’s and Lady Bell’s hand. A letter arrived from Lady Sundon to inform Sir Peter in particular and “all friends who were interested,” that her boy was in a fair way of recovery, but still called for not less than a month’s nursing from her and Lyddy. In the delay, Sir Peter, who was miserable, left in town with only Nancy of all his family, and who had got all that he could expect from the opinion of the medical men, resolved to break up his establishment in London for the season, return to Sundon Green, and await his wife there. Thus the best pretext was afforded gratis to Lady Bell for sincerely assuring Sir Peter, with grateful mention of his hospitality, that he need not have any hesitation on her account. Her visit had already extended beyond its proposed limits. Mrs. Sundon was anxious for Lady Bell’s return. Lady Bell herself was beginning to long to be out of the racket which had made a fine change, but which she did not affect for a continuance, and to be at home again and settled down quietly at Summerhill. But first Lady Bell had to spend a few days at the village of Islington, with her old nurse at Lady Lucie Penruddock’s. The nurse’s accommodation was so scanty, that Lady Bell could not take her maid. Lady Bell would come back to Cleveland Court to fetch the servant, when Sir Peter kindly arranged to send his old coachman to be their escort to Lumley, before the Sundons themselves went into the country. Nothing could be more proper and obliging. In the meantime, Captain Fane had taken leave of his friends in town, and started for Portsmouth, but he journeyed by a roundabout road, and halted on the way. Lady Bell did think that fate had been against her, when she was constrained to accomplish a second marriage, shorn like the first of all state and splendour. But there was no help for it. In the parish church of Islington, attended by her nurse, and given away by a friend of the nurse’s, with the clerk and the pew-opener to serve as additional witnesses, early one stormy March morning, Lady Bell was lawfully married to Harry Fane. CHAPTER XXII. BACK AT SUMMERHILL. It was like a dream to Lady Bell as she travelled back to Summerhill.