e spoke it,
which made his heart leap as it had never leaped before.

"If they're not yours, I don't know whom they belong to," he said.
And his eye was bright, and his voice almost shook with emotion.

"Are you doing anything?" she asked.

"Nothing on earth."

"Then come and see them."

So they walked off, and he, at any rate, on that occasion was a happy
lover. For a few minutes,--perhaps for an hour,--he did allow himself
to believe that he was destined to enjoy that rapture of requited
affection, in longing for which his very soul had become sick. As she
walked back with him to the vicarage her hand rested heavily on his
arm, and when she asked him some question about his land, she was
able so to modulate her voice as to make him believe that she was
learning to regard his interests as her own. He stopped her at the
gate leading into the vicarage garden, and once more made to her an
assurance of his regard.

"Mary," he said, "if love will beget love, I think that you must love
me at last."

"I will love you," she said, pressing his arm still more closely. But
even then she could not bring herself to tell him that she did love
him.

CHAPTER LV.

GLEBE LAND.

The fifteenth of July was a Sunday, and it had been settled for some
time past that on this day Mr. Puddleham would preach for the first
time in his new chapel. The building had been hurried on through the
early summer in order that this might be achieved; and although the
fittings were not completed, and the outward signs of the masons and
labourers had not been removed,--although the heaps of mortar were
still there, and time had not yet sufficed to have the chips cleared
away,--on Sunday the fifteenth of July the chapel was opened. Great
efforts were made to have it filled on the occasion. The builder
from Salisbury came over with all his family, not deterred by the
consideration that whereas the Puddlehamites of Bullhampton were
Primitive Methodists, he was a regular Wesleyan. And many in the
parish were got to visit the chapel on this the day of its glory, who
had less business there than even the builder from Salisbury. In most
parishes there are some who think it well to let the parson know that
they are independent and do not care for him, though they profess
to be of his flock; and then, too, the novelty of the thing had its
attraction, and the well-known fact that the site chosen for the
building had been as gall and wormwood to t