ence in tying, as it seemed; and it threw off the lamp-light in
a hazy lustre. And though it could not be said of her features that this
or that was flawless, the nameless charm of them altogether was only
another instance of how beautiful a woman can be as a whole without
attaining in any one detail to the lines marked out as absolutely
correct. The spirit and the life were there: and material shapes could
be disregarded.

Whatever moral characteristics this might be the surface of, enough
was shown to assure Somerset that she had some experience of things far
removed from her present circumscribed horizon, and could live, and was
even at that moment living, a clandestine, stealthy inner life which had
very little to do with her outward one. The repression of nearly every
external sign of that distress under which Somerset knew, by a sudden
intuitive sympathy, that she was labouring, added strength to these
convictions.

'And you refuse?' said the astonished minister, as she still stood
immovable on the brink of the pool. He persuasively took her sleeve
between his finger and thumb as if to draw her; but she resented this by
a quick movement of displeasure, and he released her, seeing that he had
gone too far.

'But, my dear lady,' he said, 'you promised! Consider your profession,
and that you stand in the eyes of the whole church as an exemplar of
your faith.'

'I cannot do it!'

'But your father's memory, miss; his last dying request!'

'I cannot help it,' she said, turning to get away.

'You came here with the intention to fulfil the Word?'

'But I was mistaken.'

'Then why did you come?'

She tacitly implied that to be a question she did not care to answer.
'Please say no more to me,' she murmured, and hastened to withdraw.

During this unexpected dialogue (which had reached Somerset's ears
through the open windows) that young man's feelings had flown hither and
thither between minister and lady in a most capricious manner: it had
seemed at one moment a rather uncivil thing of her, charming as she was,
to give the minister and the water-bearers so much trouble for
nothing; the next, it seemed like reviving the ancient cruelties of the
ducking-stool to try to force a girl into that dark water if she had not
a mind to it. But the minister was not without insight, and he had seen
that it would be useless to say more. The crestfallen old man had to
turn round upon the congregation and declare officially t