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‘Christine, here’s a paragraph in the paper hinting at a secret wedding, and I’m blazed if it don’t point to you. Well, since this was to happen, I’ll bear it, and not complain. All volk have crosses, and this is one of mine. Now, this is what I’ve got to say–I feel that you must carry out this attempt at marrying Nicholas Long. Faith, you must! The rumour will become a scandal if you don’t–that’s my view. I have tried to look at the brightest side of the case. Nicholas Long is a young man superior to most of his class, and fairly presentable. And he’s not poor–at least his uncle is not. I believe the old muddler could buy me up any day. However, a farmer’s wife you must be, as far as I can see. As you’ve made your bed, so ye must lie. Parents propose, and ungrateful children dispose. You shall marry him, and immediately.’

Christine hardly knew what to make of this. ‘He is quite willing to wait, and so am I. We can wait for two or three years, and then he will be as worthy as–‘

‘You must marry him. And the sooner the better, if ’tis to be done at all . . . And yet I did wish you could have been Jim Bellston’s wife. I did wish it! But no.’

‘I, too, wished it and do still, in one sense,’ she returned gently. His moderation had won her out of her defiant mood, and she was willing to reason with him.

‘You do?’ he said surprised.

‘I see that in a worldly sense my conduct with Mr. Long may be considered a mistake.’

‘H’m–I am glad to hear that–after my death you may see it more clearly still; and you won’t have long to wait, to my reckoning.’

She fell into bitter repentance, and kissed him in her anguish. ‘Don’t say that!’ she cried. ‘Tell me what to do?’

‘If you’ll leave me for an hour or two I’ll think. Drive to the market and back–the carriage is at the door–and I’ll try to collect my senses. Dinner can be put back till you return.’

In a few minutes she was dressed, and the carriage bore her up the hill which divided the village and manor from the market-town.

CHAPTER V

A quarter of an hour brought her into the High Street, and for want of a more important errand she called at the harness-maker’s for a dog-collar that she required.

It happened to be market-day, and Nicholas, having postponed the engagements which called him thither to keep the appointment with her in the Sallows, rushed off at the end of the afternoon to attend to them as well as he could. Arriving thus in a great hurry on account of the lateness of the hour, he still retained the wild, amphibious appearance which had marked him when he came up from the meadows to her side–an exceptional condition of things which had scarcely ever before occurred. When she crossed the pavement from the shop door, the shopman bowing and escorting her to the carriage, Nicholas chanced to be standing at the road-waggon office, talking to the master of the waggons. There were a good many people about, and those near paused and looked at her transit, in the full stroke of the level October sun, which went under the brims of their hats, and pierced through their button-holes. From the group she heard murmured the words: ‘Mrs. Nicholas Long.’

The unexpected remark, not without distinct satire in its tone, took her so greatly by surprise that she was confounded. Nicholas was by this time nearer, though coming against the sun he had not yet perceived her. Influenced by her father’s lecture, she felt angry with him for being there and causing this awkwardness. Her notice of him was therefore slight, supercilious perhaps, slurred over; and her vexation at his presence showed distinctly in her face as she sat down in her seat. Instead of catching his waiting eye, she positively turned her head away.