of his family. The Vicar, of course,
applauded him much. Indeed, he applauded too much;--for the miller
turned on him and declared that he was by no means certain that he
was doing right. And when the Vicar asked him to be gentle with the
girl, he turned upon him again.

"Why ain't she been gentle along of me? I hates such gentility,
Muster Fenwick. I'll be honest with her, any way." But he thought
better of it before he let the Vicar go. "I shan't do her no hurt,
Muster Fenwick. Bad as she's been, she's my own flesh and blood
still."

After what he had heard, Mr. Fenwick declined going into the
mill-house, and returned home without seeing Mrs. Brattle and her
daughters. The miller's determination should be told by himself; and
the Vicar felt that he could hardly keep the secret were he now to
see the women.

CHAPTER LXIV.

IF I WERE YOUR SISTER!

Mr. Gilmore in his last words to his friend Fenwick, declared that he
would not accept the message which the Vicar delivered to him as the
sufficient expression of Mary's decision. He would see Mary Lowther
herself, and force her to confess her own treachery face to face with
him,--to confess it or else to deny it. So much she could not refuse
to grant him. Fenwick had indeed said that as long as the young lady
was his guest she must be allowed to please herself as to whom she
would see or not see. Gilmore should not be encouraged to force
himself upon her at the vicarage. But the Squire was quite sure that
so much as that must be granted to him. It was impossible that even
Mary Lowther should refuse to see him after what had passed between
them. And then, as he walked about his own fields, thinking of
it all, he allowed himself to feel a certain amount of hope that
after all she might be made to marry him. His love for her had not
dwindled,--or rather his desire to call her his own, and to make
her his wife; but it had taken an altered form out of which all its
native tenderness had been pressed by the usage to which he had been
subjected. It was his honour rather than his love that he now desired
to satisfy. All those who knew him best were aware that he had set
his heart upon this marriage, and it was necessary to him that he
should show them that he was not to be disappointed. Mary's conduct
to him from the day on which she had first engaged herself to him had
been of such a kind as naturally to mar his tenderness and to banish
from him all those prettines