Thus ended Prudence's fight for freedom. She gave in weakly, without further struggle; her resolves borne down by the relentless opposition of the family, by Mr Morgan's quite courteous persistence, and by his mother's unexpected concession. She no longer had any substantial reason to urge against the marriage. The reason which she had put forward repeatedly, that she did not love the man she was being forced to marry, was treated as frivolous and generally disregarded. There appeared no way of escape. Marriage, which once had seemed to her to offer freedom from the dull restrictions of her home life, was nothing more than a shuffling of the same pack of cards. She would change her place in the game, that was all; leave one control for another. Perhaps that was life--woman's life, anyway. But she had dreamed once of fine things, big things, in a world that was fair and lovely and tolerant--the land of promise of every young imaginative mind. CHAPTER THIRTY ONE. Having yielded on the most important point. Prudence conceded every other. She no longer seemed to possess any will, or, if the will were there, she had no heart to express her wishes. The family arranged everything without consulting her; and the marriage, which was hurried forward to fit in as nearly as possible with the date previously fixed upon, was the biggest and most important function of its kind that Wortheton had ever seen. The young bride alone showed no interest in the proceedings, and wore her white satin and orange wreath with a look of weary protest in her pretty eyes, and an air of shrinking timidity which Mr Morgan considered very beautiful. Bobby's disgust at the whole affair was openly manifest. It would have been more seemly, he told her with scorn, had she married the curate. "There's no accounting for tastes," he said, with an odd lack of sympathy in his manner. "Morgan is a refined edition of Uncle William. When you are indulging in your hot water kidney cures and boiled mutton and respectability, don't forget that you asked for these blessings." "Oh, Bobby!" she protested. "Well, I told you not to give in. You should have taken a firm stand." "When you have lived at home a little while you will discover how simple that advice is to follow," she said, and left him to digest this remark at his leisure. She felt too flattened to argue with him. But on the day of the actual ceremony Bobby proved helpful and encouraging. He hovered about her watchfully, and was always at hand to fend off the bores, as he expressed it. "It might be worse, old girl," he said. "When you are fed up with things, send for me, and we'll manage some sort of a stunt together." There was no pretence between him and Prudence that the latter's marriage was a subject for rejoicing: they were too intimately acquainted with each other's thoughts to attempt a pose. "Lord! won't it be dull," he said, "without you."