to your letting her
go, and now we've got to this stage I shan't be content if I don't
help you to set the matter right."

Phillotson nodded, and seeing how staunch his friend was, became
more frank. "No doubt when it gets known what I've done I shall
be thought a soft fool by many. But they don't know Sue as I do.
Though so elusive, hers is such an honest nature at bottom that I
don't think she has ever done anything against her conscience. The
fact of her having lived with Fawley goes for nothing. At the time
she left me for him she thought she was quite within her right. Now
she thinks otherwise."

The next morning came, and the self-sacrifice of the woman on the
altar of what she was pleased to call her principles was acquiesced
in by these two friends, each from his own point of view. Phillotson
went across to the Widow Edlin's to fetch Sue a few minutes after
eight o'clock. The fog of the previous day or two on the low-lands
had travelled up here by now, and the trees on the green caught
armfuls, and turned them into showers of big drops. The bride was
waiting, ready; bonnet and all on. She had never in her life looked
so much like the lily her name connoted as she did in that pallid
morning light. Chastened, world-weary, remorseful, the strain on her
nerves had preyed upon her flesh and bones, and she appeared smaller
in outline than she had formerly done, though Sue had not been a
large woman in her days of rudest health.

"Prompt," said the schoolmaster, magnanimously taking her hand.
But he checked his impulse to kiss her, remembering her start of
yesterday, which unpleasantly lingered in his mind.

Gillingham joined them, and they left the house, Widow Edlin
continuing steadfast in her refusal to assist in the ceremony.

"Where is the church?" said Sue. She had not lived there for any
length of time since the old church was pulled down, and in her
preoccupation forgot the new one.

"Up here," said Phillotson; and presently the tower loomed large and
solemn in the fog. The vicar had already crossed to the building,
and when they entered he said pleasantly: "We almost want candles."

"You do--wish me to be yours, Richard?" gasped Sue in a whisper.

"Certainly, dear: above all things in the world."

Sue said no more; and for the second or third time he felt he was not
quite following out the humane instinct which had induced him to let
her go.

There they stood, five altogether: the par