And Mr. Oswald Cray, for the first time in his life, bent his lips on hers to seal the tacit bargain. CHAPTER IX. EDWARD DAVENAL. It was a charming evening in the month of October. The heat of summer was over, the cool calm autumn reign ad in all its loveliness. Never had the sun set more brilliantly than it was setting now; never did it give token of a finer day for the morrow; and that morrow was to be Caroline Davenal's wedding-day. Persuasion and promises had proved stronger than Dr. Davenal and prudence, and he had consented to the early marriage, it may be said reluctantly. He had urged upon them the verb to wait: but neither of them appeared inclined to conjugate it; Caroline especially, strange as it may seem to have to say it, had turned a deaf ear. So the doctor had yielded, and the plans and projects for the carrying the wedding out were set on foot. Dr. Davenal had behaved generously. He increased Mark Cray's share to four hundred a-year, and he gave them a cheque for three hundred pounds for furniture. "You must be content to have things at the beginning in a plain way, if you must be in a hurry," he said to them; "when you get on you can add costly furniture by degrees." Miss Bettina would not give anything. Not a penny-piece. "No," she said to Caroline; "you are flying in the face of wiser heads than yours, and I will not encourage it. If you don't mind, you'll come to grief." Caroline laughed at the "coming to grief." Perhaps not without cause. Were they but commonly prudent there would be little fear of it. Four hundred a-year to begin upon, and a great deal more in prospective, was what many and many a couple beginning life might have envied. Even Dr. Davenal began to think he had been over-cautious. It might have been better to wait a year or two, but they would do well as it was, if they chose. If they chose! it all lay in that. Perhaps what made people think of imprudence in their case was, that both had been reared to enjoy a much larger income. Those prudential fears and scruples were over, however; they belonged to the past; nobody retained them in the actual face of preparation. When Mark Cray was looking out for a house, the Abbey, yet untenanted, occurred to him. It had been his father's residence; it carried a certain weight of position with it; and he thought it would be well that it should be his. Dr. Davenal acquiesced: it was certainly rather farther from his own residence than was convenient; and it was at the opposite end of the town; but that fact might have its advantages as well as its disadvantages: and Mark took the Abbey at a yearly rental.