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o leave Fair Acres without getting a definite answer from Joyce herself. Honourable and straightforward, he determined not to return to Fair Acres unless prepared to ask her father's permission to lay all he had at her feet. He was conscious that at present that _all_ did not imply much, and besides, he had his mother to think of, and he must not marry till he was really in a position to support a wife in that station of life to which he had been called. He could wait for seven years, like Jacob of old--waiting for Joyce was worth any sacrifice. But what if, when she emerged from her retirement and went to Barley Wood, some one else might set his heart on the prize and win it. Then he recalled her words, spoken in answer to his question as he carried her towards home the evening before: "No; I will not forget you." They seemed to possess a double meaning as he repeated them again and again, as he retraced his steps over the observatory towards Sion Hill. They were heard in the late voices of the thrushes in the woods across the river--those dark, mysterious Leigh woods which, in the dim and fading light, clothed the opposite heights with dim and motionless masses; they were heard in the call of the sailor boys from the full river below St. Vincent's Rock, on whose summit he stood; they seemed to wrap him round with a certainty that the giant rock, from which he looked over the fading landscape lying to his left, encircled by a line of hills, on which the fine tower of Dundry stood like a black sentinel against the clear sky, was not more steadfast than would Joyce's heart be, were it once given to him. There were then no railings to protect passers-by from approaching too near the edge of the precipice which falls sheer down from this point a distance of three hundred feet, and Gilbert was startled from his dream by a voice near: "You are perilously near the edge, unless you wish to go over!" He turned with a sudden gesture, and, to his surprise, saw Gratian. "I saw you wander over here from my window," she said. "Look! there are our houses, and I came to look after you." "That was very obliging," Gilbert said, a little satirically. "Now, don't be so high and mighty. I wish to be your friend, as I have always been, Gilbert. I was very sorry for you when you were so shamefully teazed by your young uncle; he does not like to be called _old_. I hope you noticed that." "Oh! it is over now. I had no rig
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