“I have seen just enough to know that there is no place like home,” she said, with her pretty air of authority. “I won’t have a honeymoon at all if I can’t have it at Cheriton. I want to feel what it is like to have you all to myself in my own place, Godfrey, among all the things I love. I shall feel like a queen with a slave; I shall feel like Delilah with Samson. When you are quite tired of Cheriton—and subjection, you shall take me to the Priory; and once there you shall be master and I will be slave.” “Sweet mastership, tyrannous slavery,” he answered, laughing. “My darling, Cheriton will suit me better than any other place in the world for my honeymoon, for I shall be near my future electors, and shall be able to study the political situation in all its bearings upon—the Isle of Purbeck.” Sir Godfrey was to stand for his division of the county in the election that was looming in the distance of the late autumn. He was very confident of success, as a young man might be who came of a time-honoured race, and knew himself popular in the district, armed with all the newest ideas, too, full to the brim of the most modern intelligence, a brilliant debater at Oxford, a favourite everywhere. His marriage would increase his popularity and strengthen his position, with the latent power of that larger wealth which must needs be his in the future. The sun was shining in golden glory upon grey stone roofs and grey stone walls, clothed with rose and honeysuckle, clematis and trumpet ash,—upon the village forge, where there had been no work done since the morning, where the fire was out, and the men were lounging at door and window in their Sunday clothes,—upon the three or four village shops, and the two village inns, the humble little house of call opposite the forge, with its queer old sign, “Live and Let Live,” and the good old “George Hotel,” with sprawling, dilapidated stables and spacious yard, where the mail-coach used to stop in the days that were gone. There was a floral arch between the little tavern and the forge—a floral display along the low rustic front of the butcher’s shop—and the cottage post-office was converted into a bower. There were calico mottoes flapping across the road—“Welcome to the Bride and Bridegroom,” “God Bless Them Both,” “Long Life and Happiness,” and other fond and hearty phrases of time-honoured familiarity. But those clashing bells, with their sound of tumultuous gladness, a joy that clamoured to the blue skies above and the woods below, and out to the very sea yonder, in its loud exuberance, those and the smiling faces of the villagers were the best of all welcomes.