would then tell all, and risk Stephen's
displeasure. Thus brought round to the youth again, she saw him in
her fancy, standing, touching her, his eyes full of sad affection,
hopelessly renouncing his attempt because she had renounced hers; and
she could not recede.

On the Wednesday she was to receive another letter. She had resolved
to let her father see the arrival of this one, be the consequences
what they might: the dread of losing her lover by this deed of honesty
prevented her acting upon the resolve. Five minutes before the postman's
expected arrival she slipped out, and down the lane to meet him. She met
him immediately upon turning a sharp angle, which hid her from view in
the direction of the vicarage. The man smilingly handed one missive, and
was going on to hand another, a circular from some tradesman.

'No,' she said; 'take that on to the house.'

'Why, miss, you are doing what your father has done for the last
fortnight.'

She did not comprehend.

'Why, come to this corner, and take a letter of me every morning, all
writ in the same handwriting, and letting any others for him go on to
the house.' And on the postman went.

No sooner had he turned the corner behind her back than she heard
her father meet and address the man. She had saved her letter by two
minutes. Her father audibly went through precisely the same performance
as she had just been guilty of herself.

This stealthy conduct of his was, to say the least, peculiar.

Given an impulsive inconsequent girl, neglected as to her inner life by
her only parent, and the following forces alive within her; to determine
a resultant:

First love acted upon by a deadly fear of separation from its object:
inexperience, guiding onward a frantic wish to prevent the above-named
issue: misgivings as to propriety, met by hope of ultimate exoneration:
indignation at parental inconsistency in first encouraging, then
forbidding: a chilling sense of disobedience, overpowered by a
conscientious inability to brook a breaking of plighted faith with a man
who, in essentials, had remained unaltered from the beginning: a blessed
hope that opposition would turn an erroneous judgement: a bright faith
that things would mend thereby, and wind up well.

Probably the result would, after all, have been nil, had not the
following few remarks been made one day at breakfast.

Her father was in his old hearty spirits. He smiled to himself
at stories too bad to tell, an