"But," as
she afterward confessed to at least two dozen of her most intimate
friends, "there always was something so odd, so different from most
young ladies about Miss. Oakley." However, to the young lady herself
she said nothing, except suggesting, rather meekly, that it was time to
change her dress.
"And just once more let me beg you to take my shawl--my very best--
instead of your own, which you have had a year and a half. Ah!"
sighing, "if you had only spent more money on your wedding clothes!"
"How could I?" said Christian, and stopped, seeing Dr. Grey enter.
This was the one point on which she had resisted him. She could not
accept her trousseau from her husband's generosity. It had been the last
struggle of that fierce, poverty-nurtured independence, which nothing
short of perfect love could have extinguished into happy humility, and
she had held to her point resolute and hard; so much so, that when, with
a quiet dignity peculiarly his own, Dr. Grey had yielded, she had
afterward almost felt ashamed. And even now a slight blush came in
her cheek when she heard him say cheerfully,
"Do not trouble her, Mrs. Ferguson, about her shawl. You know I have
taken her--that is, we have taken one another 'for better, for worse,' and
it is little matter what sort of clothes she wears.
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