After that Paul and Patty parted no more. They had a few peaceful weeks at Yelverton, during which the newspaper in Melbourne got nothing whatever from the fertile brain of its brilliant contributor (which, Patty thought, must certainly be a most serious matter for the proprietors); and in which interval they made compensation for all past shortcomings as far as their opportunities, which were profuse and various, allowed. It delighted Paul to cast up at Patty the several slights and snubs that she had inflicted on him in the old Myrtle Street days, and it was her great luxury in life to make atonement for them all--to pay him back a hundredfold for all that he had suffered on her account. The number of "soft things" that she played upon the piano from morning till night would alone have set him up in "Fridays" for the two years that he had been driven to Mrs. Aarons for entertainment; and the abject meekness of the little spitfire that he used to know was enough to provoke him to bully her, if he had had anything of the bully in him. The butter-like consistency to which she melted in this freezing English winter time was such as to disqualify her for ever from sitting in judgment upon Elizabeth's conjugal attitude. She fell so low, indeed, that she became, in her turn, a mark for Eleanor's scoffing criticism. "Well, I never thought to see you grovel to any living being--let alone a _man_--as you do to him," said that young lady on one occasion, with an impudent smile. "The citizens of Calais on their knees to Edward the Third were truculent swaggerers by comparison." "You mind your own business," retorted Patty, with a flash of her ancient spirit. Whereat Nelly rejoined that she would mind it by keeping her _fiancé_ in his proper place when _her_ time came to have a _fiancé. She_ would not let him put a rope round her neck and tie it to his button-hole like a hat-string. She'd see him farther first. February came, and Mrs. Duff-Scott returned, and preparations for the wedding were set going. The fairy godmother was determined to make up for the disappointment she had suffered in Elizabeth's case by making a great festival of the second marriage of the family, and they let her have her wish, the result being that the bride of the poor press-writer had a _trousseau_ worthy of that coronet which she had extravagantly thrown away, and presents the list and description of which filled a whole column of the _Yelverton Advertiser_, and made the hearts of all the local maidens to burn with envy. In March they were married in Yelverton village church. They went to London for a week, and came back for a fortnight; and in April they crossed the sea again, bound for their Melbourne home.