my real good-bye to you here,
now, to-day. I hope you may be happy. I hope it with all my heart.
Good-bye. God bless you!"

"Oh, Arthur!" Then she put her hand in his.

"Oh, I have loved you so dearly. It has been with my whole heart. You
have never quite understood me, but it has been as true as heaven. I
have thought sometimes that had I been a little less earnest about
it, I should have been a little less stupid. A man shouldn't let it
get the better of him, as I have done. Say good-bye to me, Emily."

"Good-bye," she said, still leaving her hand in his.

"I suppose that's about all. Don't let them quarrel with you here
if you can help it. Of course at Longbarns they won't like it for
a time. Oh,--if it could have been different!" Then he dropped her
hand, and turning his back quickly upon her, went away along the
path.

She had expected and had almost wished that he should kiss her. A
girl's cheek is never so holy to herself as it is to her lover,--if
he do love her. There would have been something of reconciliation,
something of a promise of future kindness in a kiss, which even
Ferdinand would not have grudged. It would, for her, have robbed
the parting of that bitterness of pain which his words had given to
it. As to all that, he had made no calculation; but the bitterness
was there for him, and he could have done nothing that would have
expelled it.

She wept bitterly as she returned to the house. There might have been
cause for joy. It was clear enough that her father, though he had
shown no sign to her of yielding, was nevertheless prepared to yield.
It was her father who had caused Arthur Fletcher to take himself off,
as a lover really dismissed. But, at this moment, she could not bring
herself to look at that aspect of the affair. Her mind would revert
to all those choicest moments in her early years in which she had
been happy with Arthur Fletcher; in which she had first learned to
love him, and had then taught herself to understand by some confused
and perplexed lesson that she did not love him as men and women love.
But why should she not so have loved him? Would she not have done so
could she then have understood how true and firm he was? And then,
independently of herself, throwing herself aside for the time as
she was bound to do when thinking of one so good to her as Arthur
Fletcher, she found that no personal joy could drown the grief which
she shared with him. For a moment the idea of a comp