ick purposely went on with the lover, leaving Mary
with her husband, in order that there might be no appearance of a
scheme. She would return with her husband, and then there might be a
ramble among the paths, and the question would be pressed, and the
thing might be settled.

They saw through the gloom the spot where Mary had scrambled, and
the water which had then been bright and smiling, was now black and
awful.

"To think that you should have been in there!" said Harry Gilmore,
shuddering.

"To think that she should ever have got out again!" said the parson.

"It looks frightful in the dark," said Mrs. Fenwick. "Come away,
Frank. It makes me sick." And the charming schemer took her husband's
arm, and continued the round of the garden. "I have been talking to
her, and I think she would take him if he would ask her now."

The other pair of course followed them. Mary's mind was so fully made
up, at this moment, that she almost wished that her companion might
ask the question. She had been told that she was misusing him; and
she would misuse him no longer. She had a firm No, as it were, within
her grasp, and a resolution that she would not be driven from it. But
he walked on beside her talking of the water, and of the danger, and
of the chance of a cold, and got no nearer to the subject than to
bid her think what suffering she would have caused had she failed
to extricate herself from the pool. He also had made up his mind.
Something had been said by himself of a certain day when last he had
pleaded his cause; and that day would not come round till the morrow.
He considered himself pledged to restrain himself till then; but on
the morrow he would come to her.

There was a little gate which led from the parsonage garden through
the churchyard to a field path, by which was the nearest way to
Hampton Privets.

"I'll leave you here," he said, "because I don't want to make Fenwick
come out again to-night. You won't mind going up through the garden
alone?"

"Oh dear, no."

"And, Miss Lowther,--pray, pray take care of yourself. I hardly think
you ought to have been out again to-night."

"It was nothing, Mr. Gilmore. You make infinitely too much of it."

"How can I make too much of anything that regards you? You will be at
home to-morrow?"

"Yes, I fancy so."

"Do remain at home. I intend to come down after lunch. Do remain at
home." He held her by the hand as he spoke to her, and she promised
him that she wo