"Come, Faithie," said Paul, drawing her gently by the hand. "I can't sing unless you go, too."

Faith went; more, it seemed, of his will, than her own.

"How does that appear to you?" said Mr. Rushleigh to his wife. "Is it all right? Does the child care for Paul?"

"Care!" exclaimed the mother, almost surprised into too audible speech.

"How can she help caring? And hasn't it grown up from childhood with them? What put such a question into your head? I should as soon think of doubting whether I cared for you."

It was easier for the father to doubt, jealously, for his son, than for the mother to conceive the possibility of indifference in the woman her boy had chosen.

"Besides," added Mrs. Rushleigh, "why, else, should she have accepted him? I _know_ Faith Gartney is not mercenary, or worldly ambitious."

"I am quite sure of that, as well," answered her husband. "It is no doubt of her motive or her worth--I can't say it is really a doubt of anything; but, Gertrude, she must not marry the boy unless her whole heart is in it! A sharp stroke is better than a lifelong pain."

"I'm sure I can't tell what has come over you! She can't ever have thought of anybody else! And she seems quite one of ourselves."

"Yes; that's just the uncertainty," replied Mr. Rushleigh. "Whether it isn't as much Margaret, and you and I, as Paul. Whether she fully knows what she is about. She can't marry the family, you know. We shall die, and go off, and Heaven knows what; Paul must be the whole world to her, or nothing. I hope he hasn't hurried her--or let her hurry herself."

"Hurry! She has had years to make up her mind in!"

Mrs. Rushleigh, woman as she was, would not understand.

"We shall go, in three days," said Paul, when he stood in the moonlight with Faith at the little white gate under the elms, after driving her home; "and I must have you all the time to myself, until then!"

Faith wondered if it were right that she shouldn't quite care to be "had all the time to himself until then"? Whether such demonstrativeness and exclusiveness of affection was ever a little irksome to others as to her?

Faith thought and questioned, often, what other girls might feel in positions like her own, and tried to judge herself by them; it absolutely never occurred to her to think how it might have been if another than Paul had stood in this relation toward herself.

The young man did not quite have his own way, however. His father went down to Mishaumok on one of the three days, and left him in charge at the mills; and there were people to see, and arrangements to make; but some part of each day he did manage to devote to Faith, and they had walking and driving together, and every night Paul stayed to tea at Cross Corners.

On the last evening, they sat together, by the hillside door, in the summer parlor.

"Faithie," said Paul, a little suddenly, "there is something you must do for me--do you know?"

"What is it?" asked Faith, quite calmly.

"You must wear this, now, and keep the forget-me-not for a guard."

He held her hand, that wore the ring, in one of his, and there was a flash of diamonds as he brought the other toward it.

Then Faith gave a quick, strange cry.

"I can't! I can't! Oh, Paul! don't ask me!" And her hand was drawn from the clasp of his, and her face was hidden in both her own.

Paul drew back--hurt, silent.

"If I could only wait!" she murmured. "I don't dare, yet!"

She could wear the forget-me-not, as she wore the memory of all their long young friendship, it belonged to the past; but this definite pledge for the future--these diamonds!

"Do you not quite belong to me, even yet?" asked Paul, with a resentment, yet a loving and patient one, in his voice.

"I told you," said Faith, "that I would try--to be to you as you wish; but Paul! if I couldn't be so, truly?--I don't know why I feel so uncertain. Perhaps it is because you care for me too much. Your thought for me is so great, that mine, when I look at it, never seems worthy."

Paul was a man. He could not sue, too cringingly, even for Faith Gartney's love.

"And I told you, Faith, that I was satisfied to be allowed to love you.

That you should love me a little, and let it grow to more. But if it is not love at all--if I frighten you, and repel you--I have no wish to make you unhappy. I must let you go. And yet--oh, Faith!" he cried--the sternness all gone, and only the wild love sweeping through his heart, and driving wild words before it--"it can't be that it is no love, after all! It would be too cruel!"

At those words, "I must let you go," spoken apparently with calmness, as if it could be done, Faith felt a bound of freedom in her soul. If he would let her go, and care for her in the old way, only as a friend! But the strong pa.s.sionate accents came after; and the old battle of doubt and pity and remorse surged up again, and the cloud of their strife dimmed all perception, save that she was very, very wretched.

She sobbed, silently.

"Don't let us say good-by, so," said Paul. "Don't let us quarrel. We will let all wait, as you wish, till I come home again."

So he still clung to her, and held her, half bound.

"And your father, Paul? And Margaret? How can I let them receive me as they do--how can I go to them as I have promised, in all this indecision?"

"They want you, Faith, for your own sake. There is no need for you to disappoint them. It is better to say nothing more until we do know. I ask it of you--do not refuse me this--to let all rest just here; to make no difference until I come back. You will let me write, Faith?"

"Why, yes, Paul," she said, wonderingly.

It was so hard for her to comprehend that it could not be with him, any longer, as it had been; that his written or his spoken word could not be, for a time, at least, mere friendly any more.

And so she gave him, unwittingly, this hope to go with.

"I think you _do_ care for me, Faith, if you only knew it!" said he, half sadly and very wistfully, as they parted.

"I do care, very much," Faith answered, simply and earnestly. "I never can help caring. It is only that I am afraid I care so differently from you!"

She was nearer loving him at that moment, than she had ever been.

Who shall attempt to bring into accord the seeming contradictions of a woman's heart?

CHAPTER XXV.

A GAME AT CHESS.

"Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, I lapse into the glad release Of nature's own exceeding peace."

WHITTIER.

"I don't see," said Aunt Faith, "why the child can't come to me, Henderson, while you and Elizabeth are away. I don't believe in putting yourself under obligations to people till you're sure they're going to be something to you. Things don't always turn out according to the Almanac."

"She goes just as she always has gone to the Rushleighs," replied Mr.