‘Yes certainly the truth is best.’

‘I do not love you.  Pray, pray understand me.’

‘I understand it too well, Miss Rowley.’  The stick was still going, and the eyes more intently, fixed than ever on something opposite.

’I do like you; I like you very much.  And I am so grateful!  I cannot understand why such a man as you should want to make me your wife.’

’Because I love you better than all the others; simply that.  That reason, and that only, justifies a man in wanting to marry a girl.’  What a good fellow he was, and how flattering were his words!  Did he not deserve what he wanted, even though it could not be given without a sacrifice?  But yet she did not love him.  As she looked at him again she could not there recognise her staff.  And she looked at him she was more than ever convinced that that other staff ought to be her staff.  ’May I come again after a month, say?’ he asked, when there had been another short period of silence.

‘No, no.  Why should you trouble yourself?  I am not worth it.’

‘It is for me to judge of that, Miss Rowley.’

’All the same, I know that I am not worth it.  And I could not tell you to do that.’

‘Then I will wait, and come again without your telling me.’

’Oh, Mr Glascock, I did not mean that; indeed I did not.  Pray do not think that.  Take what I say as final.  I like you more than I can say; and I feel a gratitude to you that I cannot express, which I shall never forget.  I have never known any one who has seemed to be so good as you.  But It is just what I said before.’  And then she fairly burst into tears.

‘Miss Rowley,’ he said, very slowly, ’pray do not think that I want to ask any question which it might embarrass you to answer.  But my happiness is so greatly at stake; and, if you will allow me to say so, your happiness, too, is so greatly concerned, that it is most important that we should not come to a conclusion too quickly.  If I thought that your heart were vacant I would wait patiently.  I have been thinking of you as my possible wife for weeks past, for months past.  Of course you have not had such thoughts about me.’  As he said this she almost loved him for his considerate goodness.  ’It has sometimes seemed to me odd that girls should love men in such a hurry.  If your heart be free, I will wait.  And if you esteem me, you can see, and try whether you cannot learn to love me.’

‘I do esteem you.’

‘It depends on that question, then?’ he said, slowly.

She sat silent for fully a minute, with her hands clasped; and then she answered him in a whisper.  ‘I do not know,’ she said.

He also was silent for a while before he spoke again.  He ceased to poke with his stick, and got up from his chair, and stood a little apart from her, not looking at her even yet.

‘I see,’ he said at last.  ’I understand.  Well, Miss Rowley, I quite perceive that I cannot press my suit any further now.  But I shall not despair altogether.  I know this, that if I might possibly succeed, I should be a very happy man.  Good-bye, Miss Rowley.’