you should live with me wherever my habitation might be.”
“That would be pleasant; and if you were poor—ever so poor—it would still be pleasant. Good-night, Robert.”
“I promised to walk with you up to the Rectory.”
“I know you did; but I thought you had forgotten, and I hardly knew how to remind you, though I wished to do it. But would you like to go? It is a cold night; and, as Fanny is come, there is no necessity—”
“Here is your muff—don’t wake Hortense—come.”
The half-mile to the Rectory was soon traversed. They parted in the garden without kiss, scarcely with a pressure of hands; yet Robert sent his cousin in excited and joyously troubled. He had been singularly kind to her that day: not in phrase, compliment, profession; but in manner, in look, and in soft and friendly tones.
For himself, he came home grave, almost morose. As he stood leaning on his own yard-gate, musing in the watery moonlight, all alone—the hushed, dark mill before him, the hill-environed hollow round—he exclaimed, abruptly:—
“This won’t do! There’s weakness—there’s downright ruin in all this. However,” he added, dropping his voice, “the phrenzy is quite temporary. I know it very well: I have had it before. It will be gone to-morrow.”
