ly convinced that her new friend
possessed all virtues and all knowledge, found it not difficult to hold
that she had been divinely sent to sustain her brother and herself in
the disheartening task of civilising Mellor. Mary Harden was naturally a
short, roundly made girl, neither pretty nor plain, with grey-blue eyes,
a shy manner, and a heart all goodness. Her brother was like unto
her--also short, round, and full-faced, with the same attractive eyes.
Both were singularly young in aspect--a boy and girl pair. Both had the
worn, pinched look which Mrs. Boyce complained of, and which, indeed,
went oddly with their whole physique. It was as though creatures built
for a normal life of easy give and take with their fellows had fallen
upon some unfitting and jarring experience. One striking difference,
indeed, there was between them, for amid the brother's timidity and
sweetness there lay, clearly to be felt and seen, the consciousness of
the priest--nascent and immature, but already urging and characteristic.

Only one face of the three showed any other emotion than quick pleasure
at the sight of Marcella Boyce. Aldous Raeburn was clearly embarrassed
thereby. Indeed, as he laid down his gun outside the low churchyard
wall, while Marcella and the Hardens were greeting, that generally
self-possessed though modest person was conscious of a quite disabling
perturbation of mind. Why in the name of all good manners and decency
had he allowed himself to be discovered in shooting trim, on that
particular morning, by Mr. Boyce's daughter on her father's land, and
within a stone's throw of her father's house? Was he not perfectly well
aware of the curt note which his grandfather had that morning despatched
to the new owner of Mellor? Had he not ineffectually tried to delay
execution the night before, thereby puzzling and half-offending his
grandfather? Had not the incident weighed on him ever since, wounding an
admiration and sympathy which seemed to have stolen upon him in the
dark, during these few weeks since he had made Miss Boyce's
acquaintance, so strong and startling did he all in a moment feel them
to be?

And then to intrude upon her thus, out of nothing apparently but sheer
moth-like incapacity to keep away! The church footpath indeed was public
property, and Miss Harden's burdens had cried aloud to any passing male
to help her. But why in this neighbourhood at all?--why not rather on
the other side of the county? He coul