Durant who was not by a long way so melancholy as he ought to have been, did what he could to make the party more cheerful. How could he be otherwise than happy with Lucy seated opposite to him, travelling with him, with an air of belonging to him, which filled the young man’s veins as with wine? Sometimes he almost could have believed that it was his own wedding day, not Arthur’s, and that something more than his most foolish hopes had been realized. Alas, on the contrary, did not Arthur’s wedding make his own more hopeless than ever? Would the parents ever consent to a second unsatisfactory alliance; and what could a poor young barrister, grandson of a fortunate saddler, with the saddler’s blood in his veins but none of his money in his pockets, be but a very unsatisfactory match for Sir John Curtis’s daughter? This thought did more than friendship to restore him to the state of mind becoming the occasion, and in harmony with his companions’ mood; but yet by moments he forgot it, and half believed himself to be carrying Lucy off to Italy, as Arthur was about to carry his wife away from these dreary skies. How much happier he would have been than Arthur! as much happier as Lucy Curtis was more lovely, more beautiful, more desirable than the young virago Nancy Bates. If Lucy only had been more humbly born, less well endowed! how could he wish her less fair and sweet? He had to hold an umbrella over her as he took her to the church in which the ceremony was to take place, and he liked the rain. Old Davies, who came stumping and crying after them in a waterproof, thought it the most miserable day she ever had seen; but the young pair under the umbrella, though they were very sad (or thought they were) did not so much dislike the day. Lucy was much afraid lest she should meet the party, and yet had a yearning to be recognised by accident by her brother as well as a terror of it. She talked to Durant about this all the way, raising her pale face and those eyes which had the clearness of the skies after rain, and confiding all her feelings to him. “If it was by accident there would be no harm; could there be any harm? I would not put myself in the way; but if it happened--” “You could not see him to-day, could you, without also seeing _her_?” A tear dropped hastily upon his arm, and Lucy turned her head a little away to hide that her eyes were again full. “That is the worst of all,” she said, “my only brother! and I shall never again be able to see him without _her_--that is the worst of all. Oh, Mr. Durant, I don’t mean anything against marriage, for I suppose people are--often--happy; but it is not happy for other people, is it? It tears one away from all that belong to one--” How hard it was for him to answer her! “This is an exceptional case,” he said, his voice trembling a little, “but we must not be infidels to the highest happiness--and love.”