Roxbury (AP) - Heiress Silvia Gould, who broke her engagement to Lt. Com. Ernest Hoefer, Jr., on the eve of their wedding scheduled for last Sept. 24, was married to the handsome naval officer last night.

Justice of the Peace James Hopkins performed the surprise ceremony.

The simple ceremony was arranged on short notice at Furlough Lodge, Seager, N.Y., home of the 31 year old heiress to part of the fortune of her great-grandfather, financier Jay Gould.

The bride said last Sept. 23 that she cancelled her engagement to the 29 year old naval officer because he refused to sign away dower rights to her estate.

Newspapers had said the wedding was called off because of Hoefer's refusal to give up his navy career and become a business man in New York City.

The reports were called entirely erroneous by the twice-married Mrs. Gould. "I had every intention of living with him on any assignment he had," she said.

"He refused to sign a prenuptial dower rights agreement, relinquishing those rights in my estate," she said. "And my children must be protected."

Reached by telephone at the bride's Seager estate after the wedding last night, Hoeffer refused to comment on how their differences had been reconciled. Neither would he talk about their plans.

Asked if he would continue his career, he said, "Well, I'm still in the Navy."

Attendants at the wedding were the heiress' cousin, Anne Gould Meador Elsbury Wogoman Valentine, and her fifth husband, former cowboy-violinist Donald Valentine. Justice of the Peace Hopkins and his wife were the only ones present.

Hoefer was in uniform for the wedding. The bride wore a mink coat with an orchid corsage, and a pink hat trimmed with feathers.

The bride had used her maiden name of Gould since her divorce last April from Robert Parker, Jr. She has a daughter, Lucci, 2, by her marriage to Parker. She has two children, Charles, Jr. and Sylvia Gould Thomson, by her first marriage to Charles Dabney Thomson.

Hoefer, a native of Sheboygan, Wis., is a graduate of Harvard and Annapolis.

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