I wish I could tell you something of the state of felicity in which the General spent those days. I should have thought Rose Hill lovely enough for anybody, but the General said that when he was fitting it up--only last autumn--he had never thought of such a person as a bride, and it seemed there was a lot to be done for a bride. I used not to know whether to laugh or cry over the General's diplomacy in those days. I was supposed to be in the dark entirely about the suite of rooms which was being prepared for me, but really I knew beforehand almost everything they would contain. The General's way of finding out my tastes was to describe minutely a wall-paper, a chintz, a carpet, or a piece of furniture, and ask me if I thought such a thing would "please a lady". His craft would not have imposed on Paudeen; but for all that those rooms were going to be a tremendous surprise to me. I was always wondering in those days--indeed I wonder still--what those two men could see in me to be so absorbed in and delighted over. Esther's beauty now, or Aline's goodness, I could understand exciting such enthusiasm,--but Hilda! Ah, well, it is a great thing that people have such tender delusions about us; and surely no one could have loved better than I. My love was adequate if nothing else was, and that was the thought that used to comfort me. The time really flew round till it was May, and within a week or two of our marriage. Whitsuntide fell in May, and though people say it is an unlucky month for a marriage, I was not daunted. As I said to Lance, I was more afraid of keeping him waiting longer than of the ill-luck, to which he replied that if I suggested a further postponement he'd be obliged to abduct me. Early in May our bride and bridegroom came home. Lady O'Brien and Martha had preceded them by about a fortnight, and had been very busy with preparations, for they were to live at Annagower. Harry De Lacy was going to farm a large slice of land about Angry. Poor land that even our peasant makers-of-land would despair of, but he was full of theories and full of hope, and it was pleasant to see him beginning his new life with such energy, and Esther's boundless faith in him. After all, their poverty proved to be quite relative, because between them they possessed an income of nearly a thousand a year, which is affluence in our quiet country, whatever it might be in London. Lady O'Brien had treated Esther exactly like a daughter, saying that she preferred to ensure her future against an old woman's whims. "For who knows," she said in her whimsical way, "but I might forget Peter after all those years, and go off and marry some fellow, and make a fool of myself over him."