Mr. Hamleigh did not see the necessity; but he was too kind to say so. He pressed for a settlement as to the day--or week--or at least the month in which his marriage was to take place--and at last Mrs. Tregonell consented to the beginning of September. They were all agreed now that the fittest marriage temple for this particular bride and bridegroom was the little old church in the heart of the hills--the church in which Christabel had worshipped every Sunday, morning or afternoon, ever since she could remember. It was Christabel's own desire to kneel before that familiar altar on her wedding-day--in the solemn peacefulness of that loved hill-side, with friendly honest country faces round her--rather than in the midst of a fashionable crowd, attended by bridesmaids after Gainsborough, and page-boys after Vandyke, in an atmosphere heavy with the scent of Ess Bouquet. Mr. Hamleigh had no near relations--and albeit a whole bevy of cousins and a herd of men from the clubs would have gladly attended to witness his excision from the ranks of gilded youth, and to bid him God-speed on his voyage to the domestic haven--their presence at the sacrifice would have given him no pleasure--while, on the other hand, there was one person resident in London whose presence would have caused him acute pain. Thus, each of the lovers pleading for the same favour, Mrs. Tregonell had foregone her idea of a London wedding, and had come to see that it would be very hard upon all the kindly inhabitants of Forrabury and Minster--Boscastle--Trevalga--Bossiney and Trevena--to deprive them of the pleasurable excitement to be derived from Christabel's wedding. Early in September, in the golden light of that lovely time, they were to be quietly married in the dear old church, and then away to Tyrolean woods and hills--scenes which, for Christabel, seemed to be the chosen background of poetry, legend, and romance, rather than an actual country, provided with hotels, and accessible by tourists. Once having consented to the naming of an exact time, Mrs. Tregonell felt there could be no withdrawal of her word. She telegraphed to Leonard, who was somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, with a chosen friend, a couple of English servants and three or four Canadians,--and who, were he so minded, could be home in a month--and having despatched this message she felt the last wrench had been endured. Nothing that could ever come afterwards--save death itself--could give her sharper pain. "Poor Leonard," she replied; "it will break his heart."