are
repenting a truth--"

"I am."

"Then you must eat your ashes by yourself, for me; and I do not think
that you will ever be able to digest them."

"I do not want anybody to help me," said Nora proudly.

"Nobody can help you, if I understand the matter rightly. You have
got to get the better of your own covetousness and evil desires, and
you are in the fair way to get the better of them if you have already
refused to be this man's wife because you could not bring yourself to
commit the sin of marrying him when you did not love him. I suppose
that is about the truth of it; and indeed, indeed, I do sympathise
with you. If you have done that, though it is no more than the
plainest duty, I will love you for it. One finds so few people that
will do any duty that taxes their self-indulgence."

"But he did not ask me to marry him."

"Then I do not understand anything about it."

"He asked me to love him."

"But he meant you to be his wife?"

"Oh yes;--he meant that of course."

"And what did you say?" asked Priscilla.

"That I didn't love him," replied Nora.

"And that was the truth?"

"Yes;--it was the truth."

"And what do you regret?--that you didn't tell him a lie?"

"No;--not that," said Nora slowly.

"What then? You cannot regret that you have not basely deceived a man
who has treated you with a loving generosity?" They walked on silent
for a few yards, and then Priscilla repeated her question. "You
cannot mean that you are sorry that you did not persuade yourself to
do evil?"

"I don't want to go back to the islands, and to lose myself there,
and to be nobody;--that is what I mean. And I might have been so
much! Could one step from the very highest rung of the ladder to the
very lowest and not feel it?"

"But you have gone up the ladder,--if you only knew it," said
Priscilla. "There was a choice given to you between the foulest mire
of the clay of the world, and the sun-light of the very God. You have
chosen the sun-light, and you are crying after the clay! I cannot
pity you; but I can esteem you, and love you, and believe in you. And
I do. You'll get yourself right at last, and there's my hand on it,
if you'll take it." Nora took the hand that was offered to her, held
it in her own for some seconds, and then walked back to the house and
up to her own room in silence.

The post used to come into Nuncombe Putney at about eight in the
morning, carried thither by a wooden-legged man who rode a