'Robert, don't talk in this way,' said Dolly, pa.s.sionate and nervous. 'I don't want you to frighten me.'

'You are unreasonable again, dearest,' said Robert, in his usual formula. 'You must be patient, and let me settle for us both.'

Robert might have been more touched if Dolly had spoken less angrily and decidedly.

'If I put off going,' said Robert, soothingly, 'I lose a great deal more than a quarter's salary--I lose the prestige; the great advantage of finding Martindale. I lose three months, which in the present state of affairs may cause irreparable hindrance. Three months?--six months! Lady Sarah's illness may last any indefinite period: who can say how long it may last? and Lady Sarah herself, I am convinced, would never wish you to change your plans, and your mother will soon have her husband to protect her. You would not have the heart to send me off alone, Dolly.

Is the alternative so very painful to you?' he said again. And Robert smiled with a calm and not very anxious expression, and looking down at her.

Suddenly it all rushed over Dolly. He was in earnest!--in earnest!--impossible. He meant her to go off now,--directly--without seeing George; without hearing from him again; while her aunt was lying on her sick bed. How could she go? He should not have asked such a sacrifice. She did not pause to think.

'No, a thousand times no, Robert!' she cried pa.s.sionately. 'You _can't_ go. If you love me, stay,' she said, with great agitation. 'I know you love me. I know you will do as I wish--as it is right to do. Don't go.

Dearest Robert, you _mustn't_ go.' Her voice faltered; she spoke in her old soft tone, with imploring looks, and trembling hands put out. Robert Henley might have hesitated, but the '_must not_' had spoilt it all.

'You know what pain it gives me to refuse your request, said Robert; 'but I have considered the subject as anxiously on your account as mine.

I--really I cannot give up my career at this juncture. You have promised to come with me. If you love me you will not hesitate. You can do your aunt no real good by remaining. You can do George no good; and, besides, you belong to me,' said Robert, growing more and more annoyed. 'As I told you before, I must now be your first consideration; otherwise----'

He stopped.

'Otherwise what?' said Dolly.

'Otherwise you would not be happy as my wife,' he said, beating his foot upon the gravel, and looking steadily before him.

'Robert!' said Dolly, blushing up, 'you would not wish me to be ungrateful.'

'To whom?' said Robert. 'You propose to postpone everything indefinitely, at a time when I had fully calculated upon being settled in life; when I had accepted an appointment chiefly with a view to our speedy marriage. There is no saying how long your conscience may detain us,' cried Henley, getting more and more provoked; 'nor how many people may fall ill, nor how often George may think proper to make off. You do not perceive how matters stand, dear Dora.'

Was this all he had to say? Her heart began to beat with a swift emotion.

'I understand you quite well,' she said, in a low voice. 'But, Robert, I, too, have made up my mind, and I cannot leave them, not even for you.

You should never have asked it of me,' she cried, with pardonable indignation.

'I am not aware that I have ever asked anything that was not for your good as well as my own,' said Henley, in an offended tone. 'I begin to think you have never loved me, Dora, or you would not reproach me with my love for you. Who has influenced you?' said he, jealously. 'What does it all mean?'

She stopped short, and stood looking at him steadily, wistfully--not as she used to look once, but with eyes that seemed to read him through and through, until the tears came once more to blind their keen sight.

Raban, who had crossed by the ferry, and who was walking back along the opposite side, saw the two standing by the river-side, a man and a woman, with a plain beyond, and a city beyond the plain.

The sun was setting sadly grey and russet; the long day's mists dispersing; light clouds were slowly rising; turf and leaves stood out against the evening; it was all clear and sweet, and faintly coloured: a tranquil peace seemed to have fallen everywhere. It was not radiance, but peace and subdued calm. Who does not know these evenings? are they sad? are they happy? A break in the shadow. A pa.s.sing medley of the lights of heaven and earth, of sweet winds and rising vapours.... The cool breeze came blowing into their faces, and Dolly turned her head away and looked across the river to the opposite bank. When she spoke again she was her old self once more.

She was quite calm now; her eyes no longer wet. 'Robert,' she said, 'I have something to tell you. I have been thinking things over, and I see that it is right that you should go; but it is also right that I should stay,' said Dolly, looking him steadily in the face; 'and perhaps in happier times you will let me come to you, or come back for me, and you must not--you will not--think I do not love you because of this.'

What was it in her voice that seemed to haunt him--to touch, to thrill that common-place man for one instant into some emotion? She was so simple and so sad; she looked so fair and wistful.

But it was only for an instant. 'Do you mean that you wish to break the engagement?' he asked in his coldest voice.

'If we love each other what does it matter that we are free?' said Dorothea, with a very sweet look in her face. 'You need fear no change in me,' she said, 'but I want you to be free.' Her voice failed, and she began to walk on quickly.

'Remember, it is your own doing,' she heard him say, as Tom Morgan, who had lingered behind, caught them up. 'But we will speak of all this again,' he added.

Dolly bent her head, she could not trust herself to answer.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

THUS FAR THE MILES ARE MEASURED FROM THY FRIEND.

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange, And be all to me? Shall I never miss Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange, When I look up, to drop on a new range Of walls and floors, another home than this?

--E. B. Browning.

The three came back to All Saints' by many a winding way. Raban met them at the college gate in his rusty black gown; he had to attend some college meeting after chapel. Two or three young men were standing about expecting them.

'You will find the tea is all ready,' said Fieldbrook, gaily; 'are you sure, Miss Vanborough, that you would not like something more substantial? My bedmaker has just been here to ask whether you were an elderly lady, and whether you would wish your bread-and-b.u.t.ter cut thick or thin? Let me introduce Mr. Magniac, Mr. Smith, Mr. Irvine, Mr.

Richmond; Mr. Morgan you know.'

Dolly smiled. The young men led her back across the court (as she crossed it the flowers were distilling their colours in the evening light); they opened the oak door of the very room she had looked into in the morning, and stood back to let her pa.s.s. The place had been prepared for her coming. Tea was laid, and a tower of bread-and-b.u.t.ter stood in the middle of the table. Books were cleared away, some flowers were set out in a cup. Fieldbrook heaped on the coals and made the tea, while Raban brought her the arm-chair to rest in. It was a pretty old oak-panelled room beneath the library. A little flat kettle was boiling on the fire; the young men stood round about, kind and cheery: Dolly was touched and comforted by their kindness, and they, too, were charmed with her sweet natural grace and beauty.

It was difficult not to compare this friendly courtesy and readiness with Robert's coldness. There was Raban ready to do her bidding at any hour; here was Mr. Fieldbrook emptying the whole canister into the teapot to make her a cup of tea; Smith had rushed off to order a fly for her. Robert stood silent and black by the chimney; he never moved, nor seemed to notice her presence. If she looked at him he turned his head away, and yet he saw her plainly enough. He saw Raban too. Frank was standing behind Dolly's chair in the faint green light of the old oriel window. It tinted his old black gown and Dolly's shadowy head as she leant back against the oaken panel. One of the young men thought of an ivory head he had once seen set in a wooden frame. As for Frank, he knew that for him a pale ghost would henceforth haunt that oriel--a fair, western ghost, with anxious eyes, that were now following Robert as he crossed the room with measured steps and went to look out for the fly.

As he left the room, they all seemed to breathe more freely. Tom Morgan and Mr. Magniac began a series of jokes; Mr. Richmond poked the fire; Mr. Irvine opened the window. Raban sat down by Dolly, and began telling her of a communication he had had from Yorkshire, from his old grandfather, who seemed disposed to take him into favour again, and who wanted him to go back and manage the estate.

'I am very much exercised about it,' said Frank. 'It is going into the land of bondage, you know. The old couple have used me very ill.'

'But of course you must go to them,' said Dolly, trying to be interested, and to forget her own perplexities. 'We shall miss you dreadfully, but you must go.'

'You will not miss me as I shall miss you,' said Frank.

And as he spoke, Robert's head appeared at the window.

'The fly is come; don't keep it waiting, Dora,' said Robert, impatiently.

'And you will let me know if ever I can do anything for you?' persisted Frank, in defiance of Henley's black looks.

'Of course I will. I shall never forget your kindness,' said Dolly, quickly putting on her shawl.

The bells were clanging all over the place for an evening service. Doors were banging, voices calling, figures came flitting from every archway.

'There goes the reader! he is late,' said Tom Morgan, as a shrouded form darted across their path. Then he pointed out the Rector, a stately figure in a black and rustling silk, issuing from a side door; and then Rector, friendly young men, arches, gable-ends had vanished, and Dolly and Robert were driving and jolting through the streets together, jolting along through explanation and misunderstanding, and over one another's susceptibilities, and over chance ruts and stones on their way to the station. He began immediately:

'We were interrupted in our talk just now; but I have really very little more to say. If you are dissatisfied, if you really wish to break off your engagement, it is much better to say so at once, without making me appear ridiculous before all those men. Perhaps,' said Henley, 'we may have both made some great mistake, and you have seen some one whom you would prefer to myself?'

'You must not say such things, Robert,' answered Dolly, with some emotion. 'You know how unhappy I am. I only want you to let me love you.

What more can I say?'

'Your actions and your words scarcely agree, then,' said Henley, jealous and implacable. 'I confess I shall be greatly surprised, on my return from India at some indefinite period, to find you still in the same mind. I myself make no professions of extra constancy----'

'Oh, you are too cruel,' cried poor Dolly, exasperated.