And I want you to know that, busy as he has been until to-day, he picked
out every gift himself, and wrote the name on the card with his own
hand."
It was too much to tell her all at once, and he knew it when he saw her
eyes fill, though she smiled through the shining tears as she murmured:
"And he didn't tell me!"
"No, nor meant to. When I remonstrated with him he said you might think
it a posing to impress you, whereas it simply meant the overflow of his
own happiness. He said if he didn't have some such outlet he should
burst with the pressure of it!"
Her moved laughter provided some sort of outlet for her own pressure of
feeling about these tidings. When she had recovered control of herself
she turned to glance toward her husband, and Hugh's heart stirred within
him at the starry radiance of that look, which she could not veil
successfully from him, who knew the cause of it.
It was the Alfred Carsons who came to her last; the young manager
beaming with pleasure in the honour done him by his invitation to this
family wedding, to which the great of the city were mostly intentionally
unbidden; his pretty young wife, in effective modishness of attire by no
means ill-chosen, glowing with pride and rosy with the effort to
comport herself in keeping with the standards of these "democratically
aristocratic" people, as her husband had shrewdly characterized them.
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