“I don’t see, for my part, what respectable women want to be gallivanting and high-flying on their own separate account for, away from their husbands! Goods that are sold shouldn’t go back to the shop-windows,” said the good gentleman, all whose views of life were of the most old-fashioned, domestic kind. “Well, dear, we don’t want to talk to Rose about any of this scandal,” said his wife. “No, no; it would be a pity to put any thing bad into a nice girl’s head,” said Mr. Van Astrachan. “You might caution her in a general way, you know; tell her, for instance, that I’ve heard of things that make me feel you ought to draw off. Why can’t some bird of the air tell that little Seymour woman’s husband to get her home?” The little Seymour woman’s husband, though not warned by any particular bird of the air, was not backward in taking steps for the recall of his wife, as shall hereafter appear. CHAPTER XXV. _WEDDING BELLS._ SOME weeks had passed in Springdale while these affairs had been going on in New York. The time for the marriage of Grace had been set; and she had gone to Boston to attend to that preparatory shopping which even the most sensible of the sex discover to be indispensable on such occasions. Grace inclined, in the centre of her soul, to Bostonian rather than New-York preferences. She had the innocent impression that a classical severity and a rigid reticence of taste pervaded even the rebellious department of feminine millinery in the city of the Pilgrims,—an idea which we rather think young Boston would laugh down as an exploded superstition, young Boston’s leading idea at the present hour being apparently to outdo New York in New York’s imitation of Paris. In fact, Grace found it very difficult to find a milliner who, if left to her own devices, would not befeather and beflower her past all self-recognition, giving to her that generally betousled and fly-away air which comes straight from the _demi-monde_ of Paris. We apprehend that the recent storms of tribulation which have beat upon those fairy islands of fashion may scatter this frail and fanciful population, and send them by shiploads on missions of civilization to our shores; in which case, the bustle and animation and the brilliant display on the old turnpike, spoken of familiarly as the “broad road,” will be somewhat increased. Grace however managed, by the exercise of a good individual taste, to come out of these shopping conflicts in good order,—a handsome, well-dressed, charming woman, with everybody’s best wishes for, and sympathy in, her happiness. Lillie was summoned home by urgent messages from her husband, calling her back to take her share in wedding festivities. She left willingly; for the fact is that her last conversation with her cousin Harry had made the situation as uncomfortable to her as if he had unceremoniously deluged her with a pailful of cold water.