l. It was not that I
shrank from what his mother had called the "sacrifices" I should make in
becoming his wife. I never even thought of them. I had found too much
happiness at Hillsbro' Farm to be able to realise their existence. But I
had a superstition that I ought to feel very joyfully excited about all
I had learned that evening; first, that John really loved me, and,
secondly, that his mother was ready to take me to her heart. Yet I only
felt sobered to the last degree, and exceedingly afraid of seeing John
again. I heard him driving away from the door before daybreak, and I
found myself hoping that he might not come back for a week.

The next day I was in the same mood. I felt so grave and quiet that I
made up my mind I could not have that wonderful love for John which I
believed to be the duty of a wife. I thought I had better write to
Grace, and arrange about going with her to London. Then I grew miserable
at the thought of leaving the farm, and wished I had never seen it. For
three days I tormented myself thus, and then there came a shock which
brought me cruelly to my senses.

On the fourth day after John had left us, I was walking up and down the
frosty avenue just as the evening was coming on. The sun was setting
redly behind the brown wood, and blushing over the whitened fields and
hedgerows. A man came up the avenue and pulled off his hat as he
approached me. I recognised in him an Irish labourer whom I had seen
working in the gardens at the Hall.

"Beg pardon, miss!" said he, "but be you Miss Margery Dacre?"

"Yes, Pat," said I. "This is a fine evening, is it not? What do you want
with me?"

"Oh then, a fine evenin' it is; glory be to God!" said Pat; "but all the
same, Mrs. Beatty is mortial anxious for you to step over to the Hall
the soonest minute ye can, as she has somethin' very sarious to say to
ye."

"Step over to the Hall?" I exclaimed. "Do you know what o'clock it is,
Pat?"

"Oh yis, miss!" said Pat; "it's three o'clock, an' the sun low, but
niver fear; I'll walk behind ye ivery step o' the way, an' if as much as
a hare winks at ye, he'll rue the day. Mrs. Beatty would ha' come over
here to spake to ye, only for fear o' hersel' at the farm," said Pat,
jerking his thumb in the direction of the house. "God keep sorrow from
her door; but I'm feared there's throuble in the wind!"

I did not quite understand whether the threatened trouble was for Mrs.
Beatty or Mrs. Hollingford. I guessed t