she has gentle blue een, wi' long lashes; and, when she sits in shadow, and is very still and very pale, and is, happen, about to fall asleep wi' the length of the sermon and the heat of the biggin'—she is as like one of Canova's marbles as aught else."
"Was Mary Cave in that style?"
"Far grander! Less lass-like and flesh-like. You wondered why she hadn't wings and a crown. She was a stately, peaceful angel—was my Mary."
"And you could not persuade her to love you?"
"Not with all I could do; though I prayed Heaven many a time, on my bended knees, to help me."
"Mary Cave was not what you think her, Yorke—I have seen her picture at the Rectory. She is no angel, but a fair, regular-featured, taciturn-looking woman—rather too white and lifeless for my taste. But—supposing she had been something better than she was"
"Robert," interrupted Yorke, "I could fell you off your horse at this moment. However, I'll hold my hand. Reason tells me you are right, and I am wrong. I know well enough that the passion I still have is only the remnant of an illusion. If Miss Cave had possessed either feeling or sense, she could not have been so perfectly impassible to my regard as she showed herself—she must have preferred me to that copper-faced despot."
"Supposing, Yorke, she had been educated (no women were educated in those days); supposing she had possessed a thoughtful, original mind, a love of knowledge, a wish for information, which she took
