hat it was her duty to disregard herself. She had
thought of herself till she was sick of the subject. What did it
matter,--about herself,--as long as she could be of some service to
some one? And so thinking, she had accepted him. But now she had
begun to fear that were she to marry this man she could not be of
service to him. And when the thing should be done,--if ever it were
done,--there would be no undoing it. Would not her life be a life
of sin if she were to live as the wife of a man whom she did not
love,--while, perhaps, she would be unable not to love another man?

Nothing of all this was told to the Vicar, but Mrs. Fenwick knew what
was going on in her friend's mind, and spoke her own very freely.
"Hitherto," she said, "I have given you credit all through for good
conduct and good feeling; but I shall be driven to condemn you if
you now allow a foolish, morbid, sickly idea to interfere with his
happiness and your own."

"But what if I can do nothing for his happiness?"

"That is nonsense. He is not a man whom you despise or dislike.
If you will only meet him half-way you will soon find that your
sympathies will grow."

"There never will be a spark of sympathy between us."

"Mary, that is most horribly wicked. What you mean is this, that
he is not light and gay as a lover. Of course he remembers the
occurrences of the last six months. Of course he cannot be so happy
as he might have been had Walter Marrable never been at Loring. There
must be something to be conquered, something to be got over, after
such an episode. But you may set your face against doing that, or you
may strive to do it. For his sake, if not for your own, the struggle
should be made."

"A man may struggle to draw a loaded wagon, but he won't move it."

"The load in this case is of your own laying on. One hour of frank
kindness on your part would dispel his gloom. He is not gloomy by
nature."

Then Mary Lowther tried to achieve that hour of frank kindness and
again failed. She failed and was conscious of her failure, and there
came a time,--and that within three weeks of her engagement,--in
which she had all but made up her mind to return the ring which he
had given her, and to leave Bullhampton for ever. Could it be right
that she should marry a man that she did not love?

That was her argument with herself, and yet she was deterred from
doing as she contemplated by a circumstance which could have had no
effect on that argument.