h he has not
chosen to tell you, I am bound; and must answer under my bond unless
he release me."

"For your salvation, as I most firmly believe, I refuse to release
you," said the Rector.

"Then, sir," she continued, still with her eyes on William Wright,
"under my bond I will answer you. If, as I think, those who marry
without love sin against God and themselves, my father is driving out
sin by sin. I cannot love you: but what I do under force I will do
with an honest wish to please. I thank you for stooping to one whom
her parents cast out. I shall remember my unworthiness all the more
because you have overlooked it. You are all strange to me. Just now
I shrink from you. But you at least see something left in me to
value. Noble or base your feeling may be: it is something which
these two, my parents who begat me, have not. I will try to think it
noble--to thank you for it all my days--to be a good wife."

She held out her hand. As Mr. Wright extended his, coarse and not
too clean, she touched it with her finger-tips and faced her father,
waiting his word of dismissal.

But the Rector was looking at his wife. For a moment he hesitated;
then, stepping forward, drew her arm within his, and the pair left
the room together.

CHAPTER X.

William Wright stared at the door as it closed upon them. Hetty did
not stir. To reach it she must pass him. She stood by the
writing-table, her profile turned to him, her body bent with a great
shame; suffering anguish, yet with an indignant pride holding it down
and driving it inward as she repressed her bosom's rise and fall.
Even a callous man must have pitied her; and William Wright, though a
vulgar man, was by no means a callous one.

"Miss Hetty--" he managed to say, and was not ashamed that his voice
shook.

She did not seem to hear.

"Miss Hetty--" His voice was louder and he saw that she heard.
"There's a deal I'd like to say, but the things that come uppermost
are all foolish. F'r instance, what I most want to say is that I'm
desperate sorry for you. And--and here's another thing, though 'tis
even foolisher. When I came to speak to your father, day before
yestiddy, the first thing he did was to pay me down every penny he
owed me--not that I was thinking of it for one moment--"

She had turned her head away at first, yet not as if refusing to
listen: but now from a sudden stiffening of her shoulders, he saw
that he was offending.

"Nay, no