thinking
that perhaps Mrs. Fenwick or the Vicar would come to him; but nobody
came. The window of the room was open, and it was easy for him to
leave the house by the garden. But as he prepared to do so, his eye
caught the writing materials on a side table, and he sat down and
addressed a note to Mrs. Fenwick. "Tell Mary," he said, "that in
a matter which to me is of life and death, I was forced to speak
plainly. Tell her, also, that if she will be my wife, I know well
that I shall never have to blush for a deed of hers,--or for a
word,--or for a thought.--H. G." Then he went out on to the lawn, and
returned home by the path at the back of the church farm.

He had left the vicarage, making another offer for the girl's hand,
as it were, with his last gasp. But as he went, he told himself that
it was impossible that it should be accepted. Every chance had now
gone from him, and he must look his condition in the face as best
he could. It had been bad enough with him before, when no hope had
ever been held out to him; when the answers of the girl he loved had
always been adverse to him; when no one had been told that she was to
be his bride. Even then the gnawing sense of disappointment and of
failure,--just there, when only he cared for success,--had been more
than he could endure without derangement of the outer tranquillity of
his life. Even then he had been unable so to live that men should not
know that his sorrow had disturbed him. When he had gone to Loring,
travelling with a forlorn hope into the neighbourhood of the girl
he loved, he had himself been aware that he had lacked strength to
control himself in his misfortune. But if his state then had been
grievous, what must it be now? It had been told to all the world
around him that he had at last won his bride, and he had proceeded,
as do jolly thriving bridegrooms, to make his house ready for her
reception. Doubting nothing he had mingled her wishes, her tastes,
his thoughts of her, with every action of his life. He had prepared
jewels for her, and decorated chambers, and laid out pleasure
gardens. He was a man, simple in his own habits, and not given to
squandering his means; but now, at this one moment of his life, when
everything was to be done for the delectation of her who was to be
his life's companion, he could afford to let prudence go by the
board. True that his pleasure in doing this had been sorely marred by
her coldness, by her indifference, even by he