“Well, dear child, I pray that you may be truly happy in your new home, and remember, you will always have a loving friend in me.” What did these two ladies, Mrs. Denton and Mrs. Hesketh, mean by impressing upon her the fact, that they were her friends? Why did Mrs. Denton cry? What could happen? Once or twice a certain trembling shook the bride-elect; a nervousness, in the face of the unknown; but this was a mere passing tremor: and crafty and vigilant Mrs. Fenchurch contrived, that Letty was left little time for solitude or reflection. Three weeks later the wedding took place. It was a beautiful May day, the whole village was _en fête_, the bride looked lovely--this was the truth, no mere conventional statement; the bride’s aunt wore blue velvet, bird of paradise plumes, and an expression of radiant triumph. Everything went off with great éclat, and a carriage with four horses whirled away the happy pair, upon the first stage of their honeymoon. CHAPTER XIII The honeymoon--a not uncommon experience--proved more or less of a disappointment to the wedded pair. The bride, dazed and confounded by her new status, and the change from a nobody to a personage, was shy and silent, and felt herself to be a mere lay figure in the hands of her maid--a sour-faced, phlegmatic person with an inflated idea of her own importance, and more or less incompetent. Tucker had been engaged by Mrs. Fenchurch, to whom she was warmly recommended by an acquaintance; a deceitful lady who was only too delighted to be rid of her encumbrance. The trousseau--also selected by Mrs. Fenchurch--was even less satisfactory than the maid; it was old-fashioned and dowdy; more suitable to a matron of fifty, than a girl of seventeen. Unfortunately the weather on the Blue Lakes was wet, and it is pitiful to relate that after a fortnight his bride had begun to bore Blagdon; already he was tired of his experiment, Letty was so hopelessly young, timid, and ignorant; they had hardly any interests in common, and there was a difference of twenty long years yawning between their ages. Blagdon’s experience of life being wide and highly illustrated, whilst the girl had seen nothing of the world, beyond a school-room, and The Holt. As for her beauty, here again was a grievance! The bride could not endure the admiration of her fellow guests; but shrank into corners, disappeared into lobbies, or slinked away to the seclusion of her private sitting-room. Her husband’s vast fortune made no appeal to Letty; lavish outlay of money, gorgeous suites of apartments, reserved railway carriages, and a retinue of servants, merely filled her with embarrassment and alarm, and she went in abject terror of her maid; Mrs. Blagdon was a tame, shrinking, remote sort of creature, who took nothing on herself, and yielded her husband a sort of childish and pathetic obedience. Hugo was naturally something of a bully, and the more the girl submitted to his orders and caprices, the more he encroached.