And Fanny, he thought to himself, there is another question only you can answer—have you overcome your feelings for your cousin Edmund? Can you give your heart to me? Or will you find yourself married to one man and still loving another?
* * * * * * *
Sunday morning came again, and the banns of marriage would be read for the second time. Julia had been feeling tolerably composed. Mr. Meriwether had sent her a very handsome necklace and a long and affectionate letter. He was to visit them next week to sign the marriage articles. He was a good man, and she was a lucky young woman.
But she woke up early on that Sunday, several hours before she and Edmund and her aunt would sit down together for breakfast. However she tried to suppress her true feelings, they would surface at this hour, as sunrise lit the horizon and she was alone in her room and just regaining consciousness after a night of troubled dreams.
All brides feel apprehensive, her aunt had told her. It was only to be expected. Why, if she were not, it would be rather shameful and indelicate.
Her misery and agitation grew until she felt unequal to being in company with either her aunt or her brother and she resolved to go for a long walk, hoping to exercise her body until she became too fatigued to think. She managed to dress herself and crept downstairs. She could hear Mrs. Peckover raking the fire in the kitchen stove. She let herself out of the front door, then crossed the yard to the well and drew up a dipperful of cool water. Wiping her lips with her shawl, she hurried through the gate to walk to Sandcroft Hill and back before it was time to get ready for church.
The chilly morning air and the freedom of the outdoors only intensified the feeling of panic rising within her. As she paced along briskly, she revolved in her mind all the conversations she had had over the past year, all the reasons why she should forget about William Price. But what her head and conscience had approved of and marked as prudent and dutiful, her heart now rebelled against!
She wondered if certainty and calm would replace fear and panic as her wedding day drew closer. For if she continued to feel worse, she did not know how she could enter the church, and place her hand in Mr. Meriwether’s, and pledge to be his wife. But oh, the scandal if she were to throw him over, after accepting his proposal, and the disappointment for Edmund, who was waiting to be free to reconcile with his wife!
She walked faster and faster, her eyes fixed upon the horizon.
The appearance of a solitary rider in the distance, cresting the hill, awoke her from her reverie. She realized she had been walking rapidly for over a mile, as though in a trance, almost heedless of everything around her. She prepared to school her features into some semblance of indifference, and tugged her bonnet over her forehead so that her face might be shielded by its brim.
As the rider drew closer, her feelings revolted at the thought of being observed by any other human being. Although whoever he was, he ought to be at least as self-conscious as she. He must be a common farmer or labourer, for his face and hands were brown-skinned from hours in the sun, and he was riding bareback upon an old pony and hanging over its neck, clumsily trying to direct it without a bridle. He looked very ungainly and awkward, with his long legs dangling astride his low mount. Just like Sancho Panza in Don Quixote except that this rider was not short and stout like Sancho Panza, but quite tall, and—now that she stole another glance—rather well made. Rather like...
“Julia! Julia!”
She stopped.
“Julia!”
She was more than half-convinced that she was dreaming, that she had conjured his figure out of thin air, from pure longing and desire. But, if she had gone mad and was seeing phantasms, why had she placed the man she loved on a little brown pony, instead of a white stallion?
“Julia!”
He waved, he halloed. He smiled. It was William.
She ran toward him.
William jumped off his pony and ran to meet her. He was thinner, and very tanned. His bright blue eyes, searching earnestly, gazed into hers.
“Julia, are you to be married? Is it so?”
Julia’s eyes filled with tears, and she nodded. “I am to marry Mr. Meriwether in a fortnight.”
“Well then, God forgive me, and Mr. Meriwether too, but I cannot bear that you should do it. Julia, I want you for my wife. I love you, I have loved you since the hour I first saw you. Please forgive me for hurting you with my doubts. Please say you will marry me, my darling Julia.”
He might have said more, but there was no need, for Julia was in his arms.
“William, are you really here? Am I dreaming?”
His lips, closing on hers, answered her question.
The lovers walked back to Edmund’s house, William leading the pony by the halter, and holding his sweetheart’s hand.
“I went post chaise from Portsmouth,” he explained,
