Two days after this Mrs. Fenwick put Miss Marrable’s letter into Mr. Gilmore’s hand—having perceived that it was specially written that it might be so treated. She kept it in her pocket till she should chance to see him, and at last handed it to him as she met him walking on his own grounds. “I have a letter from Loring,” she said.
“From Mary?”
“No;—from Mary’s aunt. I have it here, and I think you had better read it. To tell you the truth, Harry, I have been looking for you ever since I got it. Only you must not make too much of it.”
Then he read the letter. “What do you mean,” he asked, “by making too much of it?”
“You must not suppose that Mary is the same as before she saw this cousin of hers.”
“But she is the same.”
“Well;—yes, in body and in soul, no doubt. But such an experience leaves a mark which cannot be rubbed out quite at once.”
“You mean that I must wait before I ask her again.”
“Of course you must wait. The mark must be rubbed out first, you know.”
“I will wait; but as for the rubbing out of the mark, I take it that will be altogether beyond me. Do you think, Mrs. Fenwick, that no woman should ever, under any circumstances, marry one man when she loves another?”
She could not bring herself to tell him that in her opinion Mary Lowther would of all women be the least likely to do so. “That is one of those questions,” she said, “which it is almost impossible for a person to answer. In the first place, before answering it, we should have a clear definition of love.”
“You know what I mean well enough.”
“I do know what you mean, but I hardly do know how to answer you. If you went to Mary Lowther now, she would take it almost as an insult; and she would feel it in that light, because she is aware that you know of this story of her cousin.”
“Of course I shall not go to her at once.”
“She will never forget him altogether.”
“Such things cannot be forgotten,” said Gilmore.
“Nevertheless,” said Mrs. Fenwick, “it is probable that Mary will be married some day. These wounds get themselves cured as do others.”
“I shall never be cured of mine,” said he, laughing. “As for Mary, I hardly know what to think. I suppose girls do marry without caring very much for the men they take. One sees it every day; and then afterwards, they love their husbands. It isn’t very romantic, but it seems to me that it is so.”
“Don’t think of it too much, Harry,” said Mrs. Fenwick. “If you still are devoted to her—”
“Indeed I am.”
“Then wait awhile, and we will have her at Bullhampton again. You know at any rate what our wishes are.”
Everything had been very quiet at Bullhampton during the last three months. The mill was again in regular work, and Sam had remained at home with fair average regularity. The Vicar had heard nothing more of Carry Brattle, and had been unable to trace her or to learn where she was living. He had taken various occasions to mention her name to her mother, but Mrs. Brattle knew nothing of her, and believed that Sam was equally ignorant with herself. Both she and the Vicar found it impossible to speak to Sam on the subject, though they knew that he had been with his sister more than once when she was living at Pycroft Common. As for the miller himself, no one had mentioned Carry’s name to him since the day on which the Vicar had made his attempt. And from that day to the present there had been, if not ill blood, at least cold blood between Mr. Fenwick and old Brattle. The Vicar had gone down to the mill as often as usual, having determined that what had occurred should make no difference with him; and the intercourse with Mrs. Brattle and Fanny had been as kind on each side as usual;—but the miller had kept out of his way, retreating from him openly, going from the house to the mill as soon as he appeared, never speaking to him, and taking no other notice of him beyond a slight touch of the hat. “Your husband is still angry with me,” he said one day to Mrs. Brattle. She shook her head and smiled sadly, and said that it would pass over some day—only that Jacob was so persistent. With Sam, the Vicar held little or no communication. Sam in these days never went to church, and though he worked at the mill pretty constantly, he would absent himself from the village occasionally for a day or two together, and tell no one where he had been.
The strangest and most important piece of business going on at this time in Bullhampton was the building of a new chapel or tabernacle—the people called it a Salem—for Mr. Puddleham. The first word as to the erection reached Mr. Fenwick’s ears from Grimes, the builder and carpenter, who, meeting him in Bullhampton Street, pointed out to him a bit of spare ground just opposite the vicarage gates—a morsel of a green on which no building had ever yet stood, and told him that the Marquis had given it for a chapel. “Indeed,” said Fenwick. “I hope it may be convenient and large enough for them. All the same, I wish it had been a little farther from my gate.” This he said in a cheery tone, showing thereby considerable presence of mind. That such a building should be so
