"You need not tell me that," she replied, superbly. And, seeing no help for it, she took the pen and signed "Elizabeth Yelverton" (having to be reminded of her true name on each occasion) with the most reckless unconcern, determined that if she had signed away her husband's liberty to use her property as he liked, she would sign it back again when she had married him. And this was the last event of that eventful day. At midnight, lawyers and lover went away, and the tired girls to bed, and Elizabeth and Patty spent their last night together in each other's arms. CHAPTER XLIV. THE WEDDING DAY. After all, Elizabeth's wedding ceremonies, though shorn of much customary state, were not so wildly unconventional as to shock the feelings of society. Save in the matter of that excessive haste--which Mr. Yelverton took pains to show was not haste at all, seeing that, on the one hand, his time was limited, and that, on the other, there was absolutely nothing to wait for--all things were done decently and in order; and Mrs. Duff-Scott even went so far as to confess, when the bride and bridegroom had departed, that the fashion of their nuptials was "good art;" and that these were not the days to follow stereotyped customs blindfold. There was no unnecessary secrecy about it. Overnight, just, and only just, before she went to bed, the mistress of the house had explained the main facts of the case to her head servants, who, she knew, would not be able to repeat the story until too late for the publication of it to cause any inconvenience. She told them how the three Miss Kings--who had never been Miss Kings after all--had come in for large fortunes, under a will that had been long mislaid and accidentally recovered; and how Miss Elizabeth, who had been engaged for some considerable time (O, mendacious matron!), was to be married to her cousin, Mr. Yelverton, in the morning--very quietly, because both of them had a dislike to publicity and fuss. And in the morning the little Cockney lady's-maid, bringing them their tea, brought a first instalment of congratulations to the bride and her sisters, who had to hold a _levée_ in the servants' hall as soon as they went downstairs. The household, if not boiling over with the excitement inseparable from a marriage _à la mode_, was in a pleasant simmer of decorous enjoyment; and the arrangements for the domestic celebration of the event lacked nothing in either completeness or taste. The gardener brought his choicest flowers for the table and for the bride's bouquet, which was kept in water until her return from church; and the cook surpassed himself in his efforts to provide a wedding breakfast that should be both faultless and unique. The men servants wore bits of strong-scented orange blossom in their button-holes, and the women white ribbons in their caps. They did what they could, in short, to honour the occasion and the young lady who had