looked on again as amiss. But there has been only one thing amiss."

"And, Mr. Fenwick, will you do this for me? Will you tell him that I
was foolish to say that he might wait? Why should he wait? Of course
he should not wait. When I am gone, tell him so, and beg him to make
an end of it. I had not thought of it properly, or I would not have
allowed him to be tormented."

There was a pause after this, during which they walked half the
length of the path in silence. "No, Mary," he said, after a while; "I
will not tell him that."

"Why not, Mr. Fenwick?"

"Because it will not be for his good, or for mine, or for Janet's,
or, as I believe, for yours."

"Indeed, it will, for the good of us all."

"I think, Mary, you do not quite understand. There is not one among
us who does not wish that you should come here and be one of us;
a real, right down Bullompton 'ooman, as they say in the village.
I want you to be my wife's dearest friend, and my own nearest
neighbour. There is no man in the world whom I love as I do Harry
Gilmore, and I want you to be his wife. I have said to myself and
to Janet a score of times that you certainly would be so sooner or
later. My wrath has not come from your bidding him to wait, but from
your coldness in not taking him without waiting. You should remember
that we grow gray very quickly, Mary."

Here was the old story again,--the old story as she had heard it from
Harry Gilmore, but told as she had never expected to hear it from
the lips of Frank Fenwick. It amounted to this; that even he, Frank
Fenwick, bade her wait and try. But she had formed her resolution,
and she was not going to be turned aside, even by Frank Fenwick; "I
had thought that you would help me," she said, very slowly.

"So I will, with all my heart, towards the keys of the store closets
of the Privets, but not a step the other way. It has to be, Mary. He
is too much in earnest, and too good, and too fit for the place to
which he aspires, to miss his object. Come, we'll go in. Mind, you
and I are one again, let it go how it may. I will own that I have
been vexed for the last two days,--have been in a humour unbecoming
your departure to-morrow. I throw all that behind me. You and I are
dear friends,--are we not?"

"I do hope so, Mr. Fenwick?"

"There shall be no feather moulted between us. But as to operating
between you and Harry, with the view of keeping you apart, I decline
the commission. It is my assured belief