Since her wedding-day no dark cloud had crossed her heaven of happiness, though she had been a little confused and bewildered at first by the wealth and dainty luxury with which Sir Philip had delighted to surround her. She had been married quietly at Christiania, arrayed in one of her own simple white gowns, with no ornament save a cluster of pale blush-roses, the gift of Lorimer. The ceremony was witnessed by her father and Errington's friends,--and when it was concluded they had all gone on their several ways,--old Güldmar for a "toss" on the Bay of Biscay,--the yacht Eulalie, with Lorimer, Macfarlane, and Duprèz on board, back to England, where these gentlemen had separated to their respective homes,--while Errington, with his beautiful bride, and Britta in demure and delighted attendance on her, went straight to Copenhagen. From there they travelled to Hamburg, and through Germany to the Schwarzwald, where they spent their honeymoon at a quiet little hotel in the very heart of the deep-green Forest.
Days of delicious dreaming were these,--days of roaming on the emerald green turf under the stately and odorous pines, listening to the dash of the waterfalls, or watching the crimson sunset burning redly through the darkness of the branches,--and in the moonlit evenings sitting under the trees to hear the entrancing music of a Hungarian string-band, which played divine and voluptuous melodies of the land,--"lieder" and "walzer" that swung the heart away on a golden thread of sound to a paradise too sweet to name! Days of high ecstacy, and painfully passionate joy!--when "love, love!" palpitated in the air, and struggled for utterance in the jubilant throats of birds, and whispered wild suggestions in the rustling of the leaves! There were times when Thelma,--lost and amazed and overcome by the strength and sweetness of the nectar held to her innocent lips by a smiling and flame-winged Eros,--would wonder vaguely whether she lived indeed, or whether she were not dreaming some gorgeous dream, too brilliant to last? And even when her husband's arms most surely embraced her, and her husband's kiss met hers in all the rapture of victorious tenderness, she would often question herself as to whether she were worthy of such perfect happiness, and she would pray in the depths of her pure heart to be made more deserving of this great and wonderful gift of love--this supreme joy, almost too vast for her comprehension.
On the other hand, Errington's passion for his wife was equally absorbing--she had become the very moving-spring of his existence. His eyes delighted in her beauty,--but more than this, he revelled in and reverenced the crystal-clear parity and exquisite refinement of her soul. Life assumed for him a new form,--studied by the light of Thelma's straightforward simplicity and intelligence, it was no longer, as he had once been inclined to think, a mere empty routine,--it was a treasure of inestimable value fraught with divine meanings. Gradually, the touch of modern cynicism that had at one time threatened to spoil his nature, dropped away from him like the husk from an ear of corn,--the world arrayed itself in bright and varying colors--there was good--nay, there was glory--in everything.