The wedding was appointed for the second week in September, about five
weeks from the period of that garden _tete-a-tete_. Lady Geraldine was to
go to town for a week, attended only by her maid, to see her father, and to
give the necessary orders for her trousseau. The business of settlements
would be arranged between the family lawyers. There were no difficulties.
Lord Calderwood was not able to settle anything on his daughter, and
Mr. Fairfax was inclined to be very generous. There was no prospect of
squabbling or unpleasantness.
George Fairfax was to be away during this brief absence of his betrothed.
He had an engagement with an old friend and brother officer who was wont
to spend the autumn in a roughly comfortable shooting-box in the north of
Scotland, and whom he had promised to visit before his marriage; as a kind
of farewell to bachelorhood and bachelor friendship. There could be no
other opportunity for the fulfilment of this promise, and it was better
that Mr. Fairfax should be away while Lady Geraldine was in London. As the
period of his marriage became imminent, he had a vague feeling that he was
an object of general attention; that every feminine eye, at any rate, was
on him; and that the watch would be all the closer in the absence of his
betrothed No, he did not want to dawdle away a week (off duty) at Hale
Castle. Never before had he so yearned for the rough freedom of Major
Seaman's shooting-quarters, the noisy mirth of those rude Homeric feasts,
half dinner, half supper, so welcome after a long day's sport, with a quiet
rubber, perhaps, to finish with, and a brew of punch after a recondite
recipe of the Major's, which he was facetiously declared to bear tattooed
above the region of his heart.
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