how
to tell his message. "Perhaps it would have been better that Janet
should have come to you."

"It don't make much difference who comes. She'll never come again. I
don't suppose, Frank, you can understand the sort of love I have had
for her. You have never been driven by failure to such longing as
mine has been. And then I thought it had come at last!"

"Will you be patient while I speak to you, Harry?" said the Vicar,
again taking him by the arm. They had now left the house, and were
out alone among the shrubs.

"Patient! yes; I think I am patient. Nothing further can hurt me
now;--that's one comfort."

"Mary bids me remind you,"--Gilmore shuddered and shook himself when
Mary Lowther's name was mentioned, but he did not attempt to stop the
Vicar,--"she bids me remind you that when the other day she consented
to be your wife, she did so--." He tried to tell it all, but he could
not. How could he tell the man the story which Mary had told to him?

"I understand," said Gilmore. "It's all of no use, and you are
troubling yourself for nothing. She told me that she did not care a
straw for me;--but she accepted me."

"If that was the case, you were both wrong."

"It was the case. I don't say who was wrong, but the punishment has
come upon me only. Look here, Frank; I will not take this message
from you. I will not even give her up yet. I have a right, at least,
to see her, and see her I will. I don't suppose you will try to
prevent me?"

"She must do as she pleases, Harry, as long as she is in my house."

"She shall see me. She is self-willed enough, but she shall not
refuse me that. Be so good as to tell her with my compliments, that I
expect her to see me. A man is not going to be treated like this, and
then not speak his own mind. Be good enough to tell her that from me.
I demand an interview." So saying he turned upon his heel, and walked
quickly away through the shrubbery.

The Vicar stood for awhile to think, and then slowly returned to the
vicarage by himself. What Gilmore had said to him was true enough. He
had, indeed, never been tried after that fashion. It did seem to him
that his friend was in fact broken-hearted. Harry Gilmore might live
on,--as is the way with men and women who are broken-hearted;--but
life for the present, life for some years to come, could be to him
only a burden.

CHAPTER LXIII.

THE MILLER TELLS HIS TROUBLES.

When the Vicar went on his unhappy mission to the Sq