rejected. It was, he thought,
more than he could endure,--and live.

Then after he had sat there for an hour he got up and walked
home; and as he went he tried to resolve that he would reject the
philosophy of Mrs Baggett and accept the other. "If I only knew!"
he said as he entered his own gate. "If one could only see clearly!"
Then he found Mary still seated in the garden. "Nothing is to be
got," he said, "by asking you for an answer."

"In what have I failed?"

"Never mind. Let us go in and have a cup of tea." But she knew well
in what he accused her of failing, and her heart turned towards him
again.

CHAPTER XVII.

MR WHITTLESTAFF MEDITATES A JOURNEY.

The next day was Sunday, and was passed in absolute tranquillity.
Nothing was said either by Mr Whittlestaff or by Mary Lawrie; nor,
to the eyes of those among whom they lived, was there anything to
show that their minds were disturbed. They went to church in the
morning, as was usual with them, and Mary went also to the evening
service. It was quite pleasant to see Mrs Baggett start for her slow
Sabbath morning walk, and to observe how her appearance altogether
belied that idea of rags and tatters which she had given as to her
own wardrobe. A nicer dressed old lady, or a more becoming black silk
gown, you shall not see on a Sunday morning making her way to any
country church in England. While she was looking so pleasant and
demure,--one may say almost so handsome, in her old-fashioned and
apparently new bonnet,--what could have been her thoughts respecting
the red-nosed, one-legged warrior, and her intended life, to be
passed in fetching two-penn'orths of gin for him, and her endeavours
to get for him a morsel of wholesome food? She had had her breakfast
out of her own china tea-cup, which she used to boast was her own
property, as it had been given to her by Mr Whittlestaff's mother,
and had had her little drop of cream, and, to tell the truth, her
boiled egg, which she always had on a Sunday morning, to enable her
to listen to the long sermon of the Rev Mr Lowlad. She would talk
of her hopes and her burdens, and undoubtedly she was in earnest. But
she certainly did seem to make her hay very comfortably while the sun
shone.

Everything on this Sunday morning was pleasant, or apparently
pleasant, at Croker's Hall. In the evening, when Mary and the
maid-servants went to church, leaving Mrs Baggett at home to look
after the house and go to sleep, M