The next matter to be disclosed was the marriage of Isaac. It was not done immediately. As the reader may have surmised, the sole cause for his keeping it secret at all had its rise in the smuggling. So long as they ran cargoes into the vaults of the Red Court Farm, so long did Mr. Thornycroft lay an embargo, or wish to lay it, on his sons marrying. The secret might be no longer safe, he said, if one of them took a wife.

With the departure of Richard the smuggling would end. Without him, Mr. Thornycroft would not care to carry it on: and Isaac felt that he could never join in it again, after what it had done for Cyril. There was no need: Mr. Thornycroft\'s wealth was ample. But some weeks went on before Isaac considered himself at liberty to speak.

For the fact was this: Richard Thornycroft on his departure had extracted a promise from Isaac not to disclose particulars until they should hear from him. Isaac gave it readily, supposing he would write before embarking. But the days and the weeks went on, and no letter came: Isaac was at a nonplus, and felt half convinced, in his own mind, that Richard had repented of his determination to absent himself, and would be coming back to Coastdown. With the disclosure of his marriage to the justice, Isaac wished to add another disclosure--that he had done with the smuggling for ever; but a fear was upon him that this might lead to a full revelation of the past; and, for Richard\'s sake, until news should come that he was safe away, Isaac delayed and delayed. His inclination would have been less willing to do this, but for one thing, and that was, that he could not have his wife with him just yet. Mrs. Sam Copp, poor meek Amy, had been seized with a long and dangerous illness. Anna was in close attendance upon her; Mrs. Copp stayed to domineer and superintend; and until she should be better Anna could not leave. Thus the time had gone on, and accident brought about what intention had not.

May was in, and quickly passing. Pretty nearly two months had elapsed since Richard\'s exit. One bright afternoon when Amy was well enough to sit up at her bed-room window, open to the balmy heath and the sweet breeze from the sparkling sea, Sarah came up and said Mr. Isaac Thornycroft was below. Anna sat with her; the captain and his mother were out.

"May I go down?" asked Anna, with a bright blush.

"I suppose you must, dear," answered Mrs. Sam Copp, with a sigh, given to the long-continued concealment that ever haunted her.

Away went Anna, flying first of all up to her own room to smooth her hair, to see that her pretty muslin dress with its lilac ribbons looked nice. Isaac, under present circumstances, was far more like a lover than a husband: scarcely ever did they see each other alone for an instant. This took her about two minutes, and she went softly downstairs and opened the parlour door.

Isaac was seated with his back to it, on this side the window. Anna, her face in a glow with the freedom of what she was about to do, stepped up, put her hands round his neck from the back, and kissed his hair--kissed it again and again.

"Halloa!" roared out a stern voice.

Away she shrunk, with a startled scream. At the back of the room, having thrown himself on the sofa, tired with his walk, was Captain Copp, his mother beside him. The two minutes had been sufficient time for them to enter. The captain had not felt so confounded since the night of the apparition, and Mrs. Copp\'s eyes were perfectly round with a broad stare.

"You shameless hussey!" cried the gallant captain, finding his tongue as he advanced. "What on earth--"

But Isaac had risen. Risen, and was taking Anna to his side, holding her up, standing still with calm composure.

"It is all right, Captain Copp. Pardon me. Anna is my wife."

"Your--what?" roared the captain, really not hearing in his flurry.

"Anna has been my wife since last November. And I hope," Isaac added, with a quiet laugh, partly of vexation, partly of amusement, "that you will give me credit for self-sacrifice and infinite patience in letting her remain here."

Anna, crying silently in her distress and shame, had turned to him, and was hiding her face on his arm, A minute or two sufficed for the explanation Isaac gave. Its truth could not be doubted, and he finished by calling her a little goose, and bidding her look up. Captain Copp felt uncertain whether to storm or to take it quietly. Meanwhile, he sat down rather humbly, and joined Mrs. Copp in staring.

"A ghost one week; a private marriage the next! I say, mother, I wish I was among the pirates again!"

This discovery decided the question in Isaac\'s mind, and he went straight to the Red Court to seek a private interview with his father. But he told only of the marriage: leaving other matters to the future. Rather to his surprise, it was well received: Mr. Thornycroft did not say a harsh word.

"Be it so, Isaac. Of business I am thinking we shall do no more. And if I am to be deprived of two of my sons--as appears only too probable--it is well that the third should marry. As to Anna, she is a sweet girl, and I\'ve nothing to say against her, except her want of money. I suppose you considered that you will possess enough for both."

"We shall have enough for comfort, sir."

"And for something else. Go and bring her home here at once, Isaac."

But to this, upon consideration, was raised a decided objection at Captain Copp\'s. What would the gossips say? Isaac thought of a better plan. He wanted to run up to London for a few days, and would take his wife with him. After their departure, Sarah might be told, who would be safe to go abroad at once and spread the news everywhere: that Miss Chester, under the sanction of her mistress, the captain\'s wife, had been married in the winter to Isaac Thornycroft.

Mrs. Copp, whose visit had grown to unconscionable length, announced. her intention of proceeding with them to London. The captain\'s wife was quite sufficiently recovered to be left: to use her own glad words, she should "get well all one way," now that the secret was told. So it was arranged, and the captain himself escorted them to Jutpoint.

A gathering at Mrs. Macpherson\'s. On the day after the arrival in London, that lady had met the three in the crowd at the Royal Academy, and invited them at once to her house in the evening. Isaac, who had seen her once or twice before introduced Mrs. Copp, and whispered the fact that Anna was no longer Miss Chester, but Mrs. Isaac Thornycroft.

"You\'ll come early, mind," cried, the hospitable wife of the professor. "It\'s just an ordinary tea-drinking, which is one of the few good things that if the world means to let die out, I don\'t; but there\'ll be some cold meat with it, if anybody happens to be hungry. The Miss Jupps are coming, and they dine early. Tell your wife, Mr. Thornycroft--bless her sweet face! there\'s not one to match it in all them frames--that I\'ll get in some wedding cake."

Isaac laughed. The jostling masses had left him behind with Mrs. Macpherson, who was dressed so intensely high in the fashion, that he rather winced at the glasses directed to them. However, they accepted the invitation, and went to Mrs. Macpherson\'s in the evening.

Miss Jupp had arrived before them; her sisters were unable to come. She was looking a little more worn than usual, until aroused by the news relating to Anna. Married! and Miss Jupp had been counting the days, as it were, until she should return to them, for they could not get another teacher like her for patience and work.

Ah, yes: Anna\'s teaching days were over; her star had brightened. As she sat there in her gleaming silk of pearl-grey, in the golden bracelets, Isaac\'s gift, with the rose-blush on her cheeks, the light of love in her sweet eyes, Mary Jupp saw that she had found her true sphere.

"But, my dear child, why should it have been done in secret?" she whispered.

"There were family reasons," answered Anna, "I cannot tell you now."

"Since last November! Dear me! And was the marriage really not known to any one? was it quite secret?"

"Not quite. One of Isaac\'s brothers was present in the church to give me away, and Captain Copp\'s wife knew of it."

"Ah, then you are not to be blamed; I am glad to hear that," sighed Mary Jupp.

"And now tell me, how is my dear Miss Thornycroft?" cried Mrs. Macpherson, as the good professor, in his threadbare coat (rather worse than usual) beguiled Isaac away to his laboratory. "I declare I have not yet asked after her."

"Had Mrs. Macpherson been strictly candid, she might have acknowledged to having purposely abstained from asking before Isaac. The fact of the young lady\'s having got intimate with Robert Hunter at her house, and of its being an acquaintance not likely, as she judged, to be acceptable to the Thornycrofts, had rather lain on her mind.

"She looks wretched," answered Mrs. Copp.

"Wretched?"

"She has fretted all the flesh off her bones. You might draw her through the eye of a needle."

"My patience!" ejaculated Mrs. Macpherson. "The prefessor \'ill be sorry to hear this. What on earth has she fretted over?"

"That horrible business about Robert Hunter," explained Mrs. Copp. "The justice has not looked like himself since; and never will again."

"Oh," returned the professor\'s lady in a subdued tone, feeling suddenly crestfallen. Conscience whispered that this could only apply to the matter she was thinking of, and that the attachment had arisen through her own imprudence in allowing them to meet. She supposed (to use the expressive words passing through her thoughts) that there had been a blow-up.

"It wasn\'t no fault of mine," she said, after a pause. "Who was to suspect they were going to fall in love with each other in that foolish fashion? She a schoolgirl, and he an old widower! A couple of spoonies! Other folks as well as me might have been throwed off their guard."

Since Mrs. Macpherson had mixed in refined society she had learnt to speak tolerably well at collected times and seasons. But when flurried her new ideas and associations forsook her, and she was sure to lapse back to the speech of old days.

"Then there was an attachment between him and Mary Anne Thornycroft!" exclaimed Mrs. Copp, in a tone of triumph. "Didn\'t I tell you so, Anna? You need not have been so close about it."

"I do not know that there was," replied Anna "Mary Anne never spoke of it to me."

"Rubbish to speaking of it," said Mrs. Copp. "You didn\'t speak about you and Mr. Isaac." Anna bent her head in silence.

"And was there a blow-up with her folks?" inquired Mrs. Macpherson, not quite courageously yet. "Miss Jupp! you remember--I come right off to you with my suspicions at the first moment I had \'em--which was only a day or so before she went home."

"I don\'t know about that; there might have been or there might not," replied Mrs. Copp, alluding to the question of the "blow-up." "But I have got my eyes about me, and I can see how she grieved after him. Why, if there had been nothing between them, why did she put on mourning?" demanded the captain\'s mother, looking at the assembled company one by one.

"She put it on for Lady Ellis," said Anna.

"Oh, did she, though! Sarah told me that that mourning was on her back before ever Lady Ellis died. I tell you, I tell you also, ladies, she put on the black for Robert Hunter."

"Who put on black for him?" questioned Mrs. Macpherson, in a puzzle.

"Mary Anne Thornycroft."

"I never heard of such a thing! What did she do that for?"

"Why do girls do foolish things?" returned Mrs. Copp. "To show her respect for him, I suppose."

"A funny way of showing it!" cried Mrs. Macpherson. "Robert Hunter is doing very well where he\'s gone."

Mrs. Copp turned her eyes on the professor\'s wife with a prolonged stare.

"It is to be hoped he is, ma\'am," she retorted, emphatically.

"He is doing so well that his coming back and marrying her wouldn\'t surprise me in the least. The Thornycrofts won\'t have no need to set up their backs again him if he can show he is in the way of making his fortune."

"Why, who are you talking of?" asked Mrs. Copp, after a pause and another gaze.

"Of Robert Hunter. He has gone and left us. Perhaps you did not know it, ma\'am?"

"Yes, I did," said Mrs. Copp, with increased emphasis. "Coastdown has too good cause to know it, unfortunately."

This remark caused Mrs. Macpherson to become meek again. "I had a note from him this week," she observed. "It come in a letter to the prefessor: he sent it me up from his laborory."

The corners of Anna\'s mouth were gradually lengthening, almost--she could not help the feeling--in a sort of fear. It must be remembered that she knew nothing of the fact that it was not Robert Hunter who had died.

"Perhaps you\'ll repeat that again, ma\'am," said Mrs. Copp, eyeing Mrs. Macpherson in her sternest manner. "You had a note from him, Robert Hunter?"

"Yes, I had, ma\'am. Writ by himself."

"Where was it written from?"

Mrs. Macpherson hesitated, conscious of her defects in the science of locality. "The prefessor would know," said she; "I\'m not much of a geographer myself. Anyway it come from where he is, somewhere over in t\'other hemisphere."

To a lady of Mrs. Copp\'s extensive travels, round the world a dozen times and back again, the words "over in t\'other hemisphere," taken in conjunction with Robert Hunter\'s known death and burial, conveyed the idea that the celestial hemisphere, and not the terrestrial, was alluded to. She became convinced of one of two things: that the speaker before her was awfully profane, or else mad.

"I know the letters were six weeks reaching us," continued Mrs. Macpherson. "I suppose it would take about that time to get here from the place."

Mrs. Copp pushed her chair back in a heat. "This is the first time I ever came out to drink tea with the insane, and I hope it will be the last," she cried, speaking without reserve, according to her custom. "Ma\'am, if you are not a model of profanity, you ought to be in Bedlam."

Mrs. Macpherson wiped her hot face and took out her fan. But she could give as well as take. "It\'s what I have been thinking of you, ma\'am. Do you think you are quite right?"

"I right!" screamed Mrs. Copp in a fury. "What do you mean?&quo............