And after a while Geoffrey Underwood came safely back from the terrible voyage which had so much alarmed his mother, bringing with him, exactly as Miss Anna had foreseen and commanded, his young wife. She was far too young a wife, her mother thought, to venture so far; but Milly did not think so. How to do without Grace, and to think for herself, was more difficult to Milly than the distance and the voyage. But she did what was a great deal easier than thinking for herself--she transferred all the responsibility to her husband. Nothing could be handsomer than the marriage settlement which Miss Anna made. She made the little bride her own representative, with the larger share of the fortune. And the Canadian family were well pleased, and asked no more. Indeed, all that Mrs Yorke desired was that nothing should be said about this strange illumination thrown at the last upon the husband who had been hers for twenty years, and who now seemed to be stolen from her and changed into another man. She would not listen to any explanations on the subject; the sound of the other name was odious to her. She took even from her boy, Leonard, that name of his which came from his father’s old life, and jealously called him Robert, which was his second name. Almost a year elapsed before the young pair came home. They arrived on a bright April afternoon, when the sun was shining over the great smoke. The windows were open: the lawn all green with spring, and set in a frame of English primroses, looked as fresh as the bride herself, who recognised it, and the difference in it, with a little cry of pleasure. Mrs Underwood threw herself, as was natural, upon the wonderful son who had been delivered from the seas, who had not been drowned, or swallowed by a whale, who had come safely through marriage, and all the other terrific dangers to which he had been exposed; but Miss Anna walked across the room with a little stately limp, casting aside her stick, and took little Milly in her arms. “Welcome!” she said, “little girl with the dove’s eyes. I always said I would accept one, but only one, compromise!” TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Two Marys, by Margaret Oliphant