Very little had been said about the honeymoon. It was only vaguely understood that John Treverton and his wife were going to the South of France. The vicar had to hurry off soon after breakfast, to read the funeral service over the coffin of a venerable parishioner, and the rest of the company took his departure as a signal to disperse. There was nothing to detain them. This marriage was not as other marriages. There were to be no evening revels, there was no dazzling array of wedding gifts to stare at and talk about. Laura had so few friends that her wedding presents could have been reckoned on the fingers of the little white hand that looked so strange and wonderful in her eyes, glorified with a brand new ring, a broad and solid band of gold, strong enough to wear till her golden wedding. The few guests felt that there was nothing more for them to do but to take their leave, with much reiteration of good wishes, and cheery anticipations of the festivities which were to enliven the old house, when the honeymoon should have waned. And now all were gone; the brief winter day was closing, the new year was coming with hastening footsteps. Only the merest remnant of the old year remained. How silent the house was in the winter gloaming, silent with an almost death-like stillness! Laura and Celia had spun out their parting to the last moment, lingering together in the hall long after the rest had gone. Celia had so much to say, so many injunctions about cuffs and collars, and the time and seasons at which Laura was to wear her various gowns. And then there were little gushes of affection, hugs and squeezes. ‘You won’t care one iota for me now you’ve a husband,’ murmured Celia. ‘You know better, you silly girl. My marriage will not make the slightest difference in my feelings.’ ‘Oh, but it always does,’ said Celia, with an experienced air. ‘When a man marries, the friends of his bachelor days go to the wall; everybody knows that; and it’s just the same thing with a girl. I expect to find myself nowhere.’ Laura declared she would always be true to friendship, and thus they parted, Celia running home by herself, with all her wedding finery smothered under a waterproof Ulster. The rain had ceased by this time, and there was the red gleam of a wintry sunset in the west. The hall-door shut with a clang that echoed in the silence of the house, and Laura went slowly back to the drawing-room, wondering a little to find herself alone in the gloom of twilight on her wedding day. It was altogether so different from the ordinary idea of a wedding--this delayed departure, this uncomfortable interval between the festivity of the wedding breakfast and the excitement of the wedding journey.