“Mr. Bowles has given me his promise, and it
is fair that I should now ask a promise from you.
It is this: just consider how easily a girl so
pretty as you can be the cause of a man’s death.
Had Bowles struck me where I struck him I should have
been past the help of a surgeon.”
“Oh!” groaned Jessie, shuddering, and
covering her face with both hands.
“And, putting aside that danger, consider that
a man may be hit mortally on the heart as well as
on the head, and that a woman has much to answer for
who, no matter what her excuse, forgets what misery
and what guilt can be inflicted by a word from her
lip and a glance from her eye. Consider this,
and promise that, whether you marry Will Somers or
not, you will never again give a man fair cause to
think you can like him unless your own heart tells
you that you can. Will you promise that?”
“I will, indeed,—indeed.”
Poor Jessie’s voice died in sobs.
“There, my child, I don’t ask you not
to cry, because I know how much women like crying;
and in this instance it does you a great deal of good.
But we are just at the end of the village; which is
Will’s cottage?”
Jessie lifted her head, and pointed to a solitary,
small thatched cottage.
“I would ask you to come in and introduce me;
but that might look too much like crowing over poor
Tom Bowles. So good-night to you, Jessie, and
forgive me for preaching.”
KENELM knocked at the cottage door; a voice said faintly,
“Come in.”
He stooped his head, and stepped over the threshold.
Since his encounter with Tom Bowles his sympathies
had gone with that unfortunate lover: it is natural
to like a man after you have beaten him; and he was
by no means predisposed to favour Jessie’s preference
for a sickly cripple.
Yet, when two bright, soft, dark eyes, and a pale
intellectual countenance, with that nameless aspect
of refinement which delicate health so often gives,
especially to the young, greeted his quiet gaze, his
heart was at once won over to the side of the rival.
Will Somers was seated by the hearth, on which a few
live embers despite the warmth of the summer evening
still burned; a rude little table was by his side,
on which were laid osier twigs and white peeled chips,
together with an open book. His hands, pale and
slender, were at work on a small basket half finished.
His mother was just clearing away the tea-things from
another table that stood by the window. Will
rose, with the good breeding that belongs to the rural
peasant, as the stranger entered; the widow looked
round with surprise, and dropped her simple courtesy,—a
little thin woman, with a mild, patient face.
The cottage was very tidily kept, as it is in most
village homes where the woman has it her own way.
The deal dresser opposite the door had its display
of humble crockery. The whitewashed walls were
relieved with coloured prints, chiefly Scriptural
subjects from the New Testament, such as the Return
of the Prodigal Son, in a blue coat and yellow inexpressibles,
with his stockings about his heels.
