“Forgive me, Nancy,” he said, gently. “You have a right to be vexed; but don’t turn from me, my darling, as if I were unworthy a look.”
“It is you who think me unworthy a look!” she cried, “you and your fine-lady sister, and all your grand friends. Oh, I am sure you would much rather go to them. If they had only come yesterday instead of to-day!”
“Hush, hush!” he said, taking her unwilling hand. She was everything he had in the world now, and any stirrings of anger that might rise in his mind were speedily suppressed by the emergency. People have more dominion even over their feelings than they think. He got rid of the resentment which springs so quickly when the nerves are overstrung and the mind excited, by simple force of the position; for if he allowed himself to quarrel with Nancy, what remained to him? The situation was impossible. He drew her hand within his arm. “Is everybody ready?” he said. “We have not much time to lose. Come!” he added, lower. “Darling, we are going to leave all the trouble behind, both on your side and my side.”
“Well, then, on mine; we are leaving it all behind. Is not everything happiness, everything delight beyond this church door?”
She could not continue the controversy: for Arthur’s face had regained the lover-look which Nancy had felt the absence of all that strange morning. She had to walk by his side, with her arm in his, and his soft words and glowing looks, and the way in which he held her hand upon his arm, gradually stole at once the misery and the defiance out of her heart. She began to forget the untoward details, and to feel only the thrill of this mysterious thing which had happened. That she was no longer Nancy Bates but Mrs. Arthur Curtis, to be my Lady Curtis sometime--no longer a poor girl, the tax-collector’s daughter, but a lady! All in a moment, this mystic change had been made. And she _was_ changed; she felt it, with a sudden revulsion of sentiment. The laugh of Sarah Jane behind her filled her with a half impatient shame. She was annoyed to hear her mother telling over the just concluded incident. She herself had a right to be angry, but what had they to do with Miss Curtis’ visit? Lucy’s visit! that was what her brother’s wife had a right to call her; but “the Bateses” had no right to interfere at all. Had Arthur said this, she would have blazed into high resentment and declared her family to be as good, if not better, than his; but in the seclusion of her private soul, a seclusion not yet in any way impaired by the fact that she was married, this was how she was thinking. It gave her a sense of importance that Lucy had come. She had taken no notice of Arthur’s family, but they had been compelled to take notice of her. And in time to come when she might have many battles to fight with them, it would be well to have this fact in hand. Accordingly, when the party arrived at home, it was Nancy who silenced her mother, whose indignation against Arthur for allowing her to address old Nurse Davies as my lady was great.