d to his
mother's request, much wondering at the source of this new misfortune.
As to Fanny, she, as he believed, had held out no encouragement to Mr.
Saul's overtures. When Mr. Saul had proposed to her--making that first
offer of which Harry had been aware--nothing could have been more
steadfast than her rejection of the gentleman's hand. Harry had regarded
Mr. Saul as little less than mad to think of such a thing, but, thinking
of him as a man very different in his ways and feelings from other men,
had believed that he might go on at Clavering comfortably as curate in
spite of that little accident. It appeared, however, that he was not
going on comfortably; but Harry, when he left London, could not quite
imagine how such violent discomfort should have arisen that the rector
and the curate should be unable to meet each other. If the reader will
allow me, I will go back a little and explain this.

The reader already knows what Fanny's brother did not know--namely, that
Mr. Saul had pressed his suit again, and had pressed it very strongly;
and he also knows that Fanny's reception of the second offer was very
different from her reception of the first. She had begun to doubt--to
doubt whether her first judgment as to Mr. Saul's character had not been
unjust--to doubt whether, in addressing her, he was not right, seeing
that his love for her was so strong--to doubt whether she did not like
him better than she had thought she did--to doubt whether an engagement
with a penniless curate was in truth a position utterly to be
reprehended and avoided. Young penniless curates must love somebody as
well as young beneficed vicars and rectors. And then Mr. Saul pleaded
his cause so well!

She did not at once speak to her mother on the matter, and the fact that
she had a secret made her very wretched. She had left Mr. Saul in doubt,
giving him no answer, and he had said that he would ask her again in a
few days what was to be his fate. She hardly knew how to tell her mother
of this till she had told herself what were her own wishes. She
thoroughly desired to have her mother in her confidence, and promised
herself that it should be so before Mr. Saul renewed his suit. He was a
man who was never hurried or impatient in his doings. But Fanny put off
the interview with her mother, and put off her own final resolution,
till it was too late, and Mr. Saul came upon her again, when she was but
ill prepared for him.

A woman, when she doubt