The marriage was deferred¹, at Eunice’s request, as an expression of respect to the memory of Philip’s father.

When the time of delay had passed, it was arranged that the wedding ceremony should be held—after due publication of Banns—at the parish church of the London suburb in which my house was situated². Miss Jillgall was bridesmaid, and I gave away the bride. Before we set out for the church, Eunice asked leave to speak with me for a moment in private.

“Don’t think,” she said, “that I am forgetting my promise to be content with what you have told me about myself. I am not so ungrateful as that. But I do want, before I consent to be Philip’s wife, to feel sure that I am not quite unworthy of him. Is it because I am of mean birth that you told me I was Mr. Gracedieu’s adopted child—and told me no more?”

I could honestly satisfy her, so far. “Certainly not!” I said.

She put her arms round my neck. “Do you say that,” she asked, “to make my mind easy? or do you say it on your word of honor?”

“On my word of honor.”

We arrived at the church. Let Miss Jillgall describe the marriage, in her own inimitable way.

“No wedding breakfast, when you don’t want to eat it. No wedding speeches, when nobody wants to make them, and nobody wants to hear them. And no false sentiment, shedding tears and reddening noses, on the happiest day in the whole year. A model marriage! I could desire nothing better, if I had any prospect³ of being a bride myself.”

They went away for their honeymoon⁴ to a quiet place by the seaside, not very far from the town in which Eunice had passed some of the happiest and the wretchedest days in her life. She persisted in thinking it possible that Mr. Gracedieu might recover the use of his faculties⁵, at the last, and might wish to see her on his death-bed. “His adopted daughter,” she gently reminded me, “is his only daughter now.” The doctor shook his head when I told him what Eunice had said to me—and, the sad truth must be told, the doctor was right.

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