a minute passed, and still there was no
knock. Then there arose a soft series of raps, no louder than the
tapping of a distant woodpecker, and barely distinct enough to reach her
ears. She composed herself and flung open the door.

In the porch stood Mr. Maybold.

There was a warm flush upon his face, and a bright flash in his eyes,
which made him look handsomer than she had ever seen him before.

"Good-evening, Miss Day."

"Good-evening, Mr. Maybold," she said, in a strange state of mind. She
had noticed, beyond the ardent hue of his face, that his voice had a
singular tremor in it, and that his hand shook like an aspen leaf when he
laid his umbrella in the corner of the porch. Without another word being
spoken by either, he came into the schoolroom, shut the door, and moved
close to her. Once inside, the expression of his face was no more
discernible, by reason of the increasing dusk of evening.

"I want to speak to you," he then said; "seriously--on a perhaps
unexpected subject, but one which is all the world to me--I don't know
what it may be to you, Miss Day."

No reply.

"Fancy, I have come to ask you if you will be my wife?"

As a person who has been idly amusing himself with rolling a snowball
might start at finding he had set in motion an avalanche, so did Fancy
start at these words from the vicar. And in the dead silence which
followed them, the breathings of the man and of the woman could be
distinctly and separately heard; and there was this difference between
them--his respirations gradually grew quieter and less rapid after the
enunciation hers, from having been low and regular, increased in
quickness and force, till she almost panted.

"I cannot, I cannot, Mr. Maybold--I cannot! Don't ask me!" she said.

"Don't answer in a hurry!" he entreated. "And do listen to me. This is
no sudden feeling on my part. I have loved you for more than six months!
Perhaps my late interest in teaching the children here has not been so
single-minded as it seemed. You will understand my motive--like me
better, perhaps, for honestly telling you that I have struggled against
my emotion continually, because I have thought that it was not well for
me to love you! But I resolved to struggle no longer; I have examined
the feeling; and the love I bear you is as genuine as that I could bear
any woman! I see your great charm; I respect your natural talents, and
the refinement they have brought into your nature--