, as the patriarchs were of old," he
said. "Though the seven years should be prolonged to fourteen, I do not
think I should seek any Leah."

They were soon at the gate, and his work for that evening was done. He
would go home to his solitary room at a neighboring farm-house, and sit
in triumph as he eat his morsel of cold mutton by himself. He, without
any advantages of person to back him, poor, friendless, hitherto
conscious that he was unfitted to mix even in ordinary social life--he
had won the heart of the fairest woman he had ever seen. "You will give
me your hand at parting," he said, whereupon she tendered it to him with
her eyes fixed upon the ground. "I hope we understand each other," he
continued. "You may at any rate understand this, that I love you with
all my heart and all my strength. If things prosper with me, all my
prosperity shall be for you. If there be no prosperity for me, you shall
be my only consolation in this world. You are my Alpha and my Omega, my
first and last, my beginning and end--my everything, my all." Then he
turned away and left her, and there had come no negative from her lips.
As far as her lips were concerned, no negative was any longer possible
to her.

She went into the house knowing that she must at once seek her mother
but she allowed herself first to remain for some half--hour in her own
bedroom, preparing the words that she would use. The interview she knew
would be difficult--much more difficult than it would have been before
her last walk with Mr. Saul; and the worst of it was that she could not
quite make up her mind as to what it was that she wished to say. She
waited till she could hear her mother's step on the stairs. At last Mrs.
Clavering came up to dress, and then Fanny, following her quickly into
her bedroom, abruptly began:

"Mamma," she said, "I want to speak to you very much."

"Well, my dear?"

"But you mustn't be in a hurry, mamma." Mrs. Clavering looked at her
watch, and declaring that it still wanted three-quarters of an hour to
dinner, promised that she would not be very much in a hurry.

"Mamma, Mr. Saul has been speaking to me again.

"Has he, my dear? You cannot, of course, help it if he chooses to speak
to you, but he ought to know that it is very foolish. It must end in his
having to leave us."

"That is what he says, mamma. He says he must go away unless--"

"Unless what?"

"Unless I will consent that he shall remain here as--"

"As your a