"No, no!" cried Faith, desperately, like one struggling for voice through a nightmare. "I do care. But--Paul! I don't know! I can't tell.

Let me wait, please. Let me think."

"As long as you like, darling," said he, gently and tenderly. "You know all I can tell you. You know I have cared for you all my life. And I'll wait now till you tell me I may speak again. Till you put on that little ring of mine, Faith!"

There was a little loving reproach in these last words.

"Please take me home, now, Paul!"

They were close upon the return path around the Lake. A look of disappointed pain pa.s.sed over Paul Rushleigh's features. This was hardly the happy reception, however shy, he had hoped and looked for. Still he hoped, however. He could not think she did not care for him. She, who had been the spring of his own thoughts and purposes for years. But, obedient to her wish, he touched his horse with the lash, and urged him homeward.

Paul helped her from the wagon at the little white gate at Cross Corners, and then they both remembered that she was to have gone to Lakeside to tea.

"What shall I tell Margaret?" he asked.

"Oh, don't tell her anything! I mean--tell her, I couldn't come to-night. And, Paul--forgive me! I do want so to do what is right!"

"Isn't it right to let me try and make you happy all your life?"

A light had broken upon her--confusedly, it is true--yet that began to show her to herself more plainly than any glimpse she had had before, as Paul's words, simple, yet burning with his strong sure love, came to her, with their claim to honest answer.

She saw what it was he brought her; she felt it was less she had to give him back. There was something in the world she might go missing all the way through life, if she took this lot that lay before her now. Would he not miss a something in her, also? Yet, must she needs insist on the greatest, the rarest, that G.o.d ever sends? Why should she, more than others? Would she wrong him more, to give him what she could, or to refuse him all?

"I ought--if I do--" she said, tremulously, "to care as you do!"

"You never can, Faith!" cried the young man, impetuously. "I care as a man cares! Let me love you! care a little for me, and let it grow to more!"

Men, till something is accorded, are willing to take so little! And then the little must become so entire!

"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Mis' Battis, as Faith came in. "Who'd a thought o' seein' you home to tea! I s'pose you ain't had none?"

"Yes--no. That is, I don't want any. Where is my mother?"

"She and your pa's gone down to Dr. Wasgatt's. I knew 'twould be contrary to the thirty-nine articles that they should get away from there without their suppers, and so I let the fire right down, and blacked the stove."

"Never mind," said Faith, abstractedly. "I don't feel hungry." And she went away, upstairs.

"'M!" said Mis 'Battis, significantly, to herself, running a released knitting needle through her hair, "don't tell me! I've been through the mill!"

Half an hour after, she came up to Faith's door.

"The minister's downstairs," said she. "Hope to goodness, he's had _his_ supper!"

"Oh, if I dared!" thought Faith; and her heart throbbed tumultuously.

"Why can't there be somebody to tell me what I ought to do?"

If she had dared, how she could have leaned upon this friend! How she could have trusted her conscience and her fate to his decision!

"Does anything trouble you to-night, Miss Faith?" asked Mr. Armstrong, watching her sad, abstracted look in one of the silent pauses that broke their attempts at conversation. "Are you ill, or tired?"

"Oh, no!" answered Faith, quickly, from the surface, as one often does when thoughts lie deep. "I am quite well. Only--I am sometimes puzzled."

"About what is? Or about what ought to be?"

"About doing. So much depends. I get so tired--feeling how responsible everything makes me. I wish I were a little child again! Or that somebody would just take me and tell me where to go, and where to stay, and what to do, and what not. From minute to minute, as the things come up."

Roger Armstrong, with his great, chastened soul, yearned over the child as she spoke; so gladly he would have taken her, at that moment, to his heart, and bid her lean on him for all that man might give of help--of love--of leading!

If she had told him, in that moment, all her doubt, as for the instant of his pause she caught her breath with swelling impulse to do!

"'And they shall all be led of G.o.d';" said the minister. "It is only to be willing to take His way rather than one's own. All this that seems to depend painfully upon oneself, depends, then, upon Him. The act is human--the consequences become divine."

Faith was silenced then. There was no appeal to human help from that.

Her impulse throbbed itself away into a lonely pa.s.siveness again.

There was a distance between these two that neither dared to pa.s.s.

A word was spoken between mother and daughter as they parted for the night.

"Mother! I have such a thing to think of--to decide!"

It was whispered low, and with cheek hidden on her mother's neck, as the good-night kiss was taken.

"Decide for your own happiness, Faithie. We have seen and understood for a long time. If it is to be as we think, nothing could give us a greater joy for you."

Ah! how much had father and mother seen and understood?

The daughter went her way, to wage her own battle in secret; to balance and fix her decision between her own heart and G.o.d. So we find ourselves left, at the last, in all the great crises of our life.

Late that night, while Mr. and Mrs. Gartney were felicitating each other, cheerily, upon the great good that had fallen to the lot of their cherished child, that child sat by her open window, looking out into the summer night; the tossing elm boughs whispering weird syllables in her ears, and the stars looking down upon her soul struggle, so silently, from so far!

"Mr. Rushleigh's here!" shouted Hendie, precipitating himself, next morning, into the breakfast room, where, at a rather later hour than usual, Mrs. Gartney and Faith were washing and wiping the silver and china, and Mr. Gartney still lingered in his seat, finishing somebody's long speech, reported in the evening paper of yesterday.

"Mr. Rushleigh's here, on his long-tailed black horse! And he says he'll give me a ride, but not yet. He wants to see papa. Make haste, papa."

Faith dropped her towel, and as Mr. Gartney rose to go out and meet his visitor, just whispered, hurriedly, to her mother:

"I'll come down again. I'll see him before he goes." And escaped up the kitchen staircase to her own room.

Paul Rushleigh came, he told Mr. Gartney, because, although Faith had not authorized him to appeal to her father to ratify any consent of hers, he thought it right to let him know what he had already said to his daughter. He did not wish to hurry Faith. He only wished to stand openly with Mr. Gartney in the matter, and would wait, then, till she should be quite ready to give him her own answer.

He explained the prospect his father offered him, and the likelihood of his making a permanent home at Kinnicutt.

"That is," he added, "if I am to be so happy as to have a home, anywhere, of my own."

Mr. Gartney was delighted with the young man's unaffected warmth of heart and n.o.ble candor.

"I could not wish better for my daughter, Mr. Rushleigh," he replied.

"And she is a daughter whom I may fairly wish the best for, too."