“You should give him an answer, dear, one way or the other.” These wise words were spoken by Mrs. Fenwick to her friend as they sat together, with their work in their hands, on a garden seat under a cedar tree. It was an August evening after dinner, and the Vicar was out about his parish. The two elder children were playing in the garden, and the two young women were alone together.

“Of course I shall give him an answer. What answer does he wish?”

“You know what answer he wishes. If any man was ever in earnest he is.”

“Am I not doing the best I can for him then in waiting—to see whether I can say yes?”

“It cannot be well for him to be in suspense on such a matter; and, dear Mary, it cannot be well for you either. One always feels that when a girl bids a man to wait, she will take him after a while. It always comes to that. If you had been at home at Loring, the time would not have been much; but, being so near to him, and seeing him every day, must be bad. You must both be in a state of fever.”

“Then I will go back to Loring.”

“No; not now, till you have positively made up your mind, and given him an answer one way or the other. You could not go now and leave him in doubt. Take him at once, and have done with it. He is as good as gold.”

In answer to this, Mary for a while said nothing, but went sedulously on with her work.

“Mamma,” said a little girl, running up, followed by a nursery-maid, “the ball’s in the water!”

The child was a beautiful fair-haired little darling about four-and-a-half years old, and a boy, a year younger, and a little shorter, and a little stouter, was toddling after her.

“The ball in the water, Flo! Can’t Jim get it out?”

“Jim’s gone, mamma.”

Then Jane, the nursery-maid, proceeded to explain that the ball had rolled in and had been carried down the stream to some bushes, and that it was caught there just out of reach of all that she, Jane, could do with a long stick for its recovery. Jim, the gardener, was not to be found; and they were in despair lest the ball should become wet through and should perish.

Mary at once saw her opportunity of escape,—her opportunity for that five minutes of thought by herself which she needed. “I’ll come, Flo, and see what can be done,” said Mary.

“Do; ‘cause you is so big,” said the little girl.

“We’ll see if my long arms won’t do as well as Jim’s,” said Mary; “only Jim would go in, perhaps, which I certainly shall not do.” Then she took Flo by the hand, and together they ran down to the margin of the river.

There lay the treasure, a huge red inflated ball, just stopped in its downward current by a short projecting stick. Jim could have got it certainly, because he could have suspended himself over the stream from a bough, and could have dislodged the ball, and have floated it on to the bank.

“Lean over, Mary,—a great deal, and we’ll hold you,” said Flo, to whom her ball was at this moment worth any effort. Mary did lean over, and poked at it, and at last thought that she would trust herself to the bough, as Jim would have done, and became more and more venturous, and at last touched the ball, and then, at last,—fell into the river! Immediately there was a scream and a roar, and a splashing about of skirts and petticoats, and by the time that Mrs. Fenwick was on the bank, Mary Lowther had extricated herself, and had triumphantly brought out Flo’s treasure with her.

“Mary, are you hurt?” said her friend.

“What should hurt me? Oh dear, oh dear! I never fell into a river before. My darling Flo, don’t be unhappy. It’s such good fun. Only you mustn’t fall in yourself, till you’re as big as I am.” Flo was in an agony of tears, not deigning to look at the rescued ball.

“You do not mean that your head has been under?” said Mrs. Fenwick.

“My face was, and I felt so odd. For about half a moment I had a sound of Ophelia in my ears. Then I was laughing at myself for being such a goose.”

“You’d better come up and go to bed, dear; and I’ll get you something warm.”

“I won’t go to bed, and I won’t have anything warm; but I will change my clothes. What an adventure! What will Mr. Fenwick say?”

“What will Mr. Gilmore say?” To this Mary Lowther made no answer, but went straight up to the house, and into her room, and changed her clothes.

While she was there Fenwick and Gilmore both appeared at the open window of the drawing-room in which Mrs. Fenwick was sitting. She had known well enough that Harry Gilmore would not let the evening pass without coming to the vicarage, and at one time had hoped to persuade Mary Lowther to give her verdict on this very day. Both she and her husband were painfully anxious that Harry might succeed. Fenwick had loved the man dearly for many years, and Janet Fenwick had loved him since she had known him as her husband’s friend. They both felt that he was showing more of manhood than they had expected from him in the persistency of his love, and that he deserved his reward. And they both believed also that for Mary herself it would be a prosperous and a happy marriage. And then, where is the married woman who does not wish that the maiden friend who comes to stay with her should find a husband in her house? The parson and his wife were altogether of one mind in this matter, and thought that Mary Lowther ought to be made to give herself to Harry Gilmore.

“What do you think has happened?” said Mrs. Fenwick, coming to the window, which opened down to the ground. “Mary Lowther has fallen into the river.”

“Fallen where?” shouted Gilmore, putting up both his hands, and seeming to prepare himself to rush away among the river gods in search of his love.

“Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Gilmore, she’s upstairs, quite safe,—only she has had a ducking.” Then the circumstances were explained, and the papa declared magisterially that Flo must not play any more with her ball near the river,—an order to which it was not probable that much close attention would ever be paid.

“I suppose Miss Lowther will have gone to bed?” said Gilmore.

“On the contrary, I expect her every moment. I suggested bed, and warm drinks, and cossetting; but she would have none of it. She scrambled out all by herself, and seemed to think it very good fun.”

“Come in at any rate and have some tea,” said the Vicar. “If you start before eleven, I’ll walk half the way back with you.”

In the mean time, in spite of her accident, Mary had gained the opportunity that she had required. The point for self-meditation was not so much whether she would or would not accept Mr. Gilmore now, as that other point;—was she or was she not wrong to keep him in suspense. She knew very well that she would not accept him now. It seemed to her that a girl should know a man very thoroughly before she would be justified in trusting herself altogether to his hands, and she thought that her knowledge of Mr. Gilmore was insufficient. It might however be the case that in such circumstances duty required her to give him at once an unhesitating answer. She did not find herself to be a bit nearer to knowing him and to loving him than she was a month since. Her friend Janet had complained again and again of the suspense to which she was subjecting the man;—but she knew on the other hand that her friend Janet did this in her intense anxiety to promote the match. Was it wrong to say to the man—“I will wait and try?” Her friend told her that to say that she would wait and try, was in truth to say that she would take him at some future time;—that any girl who said so had almost committed herself to such a decision;—that the very fact that she was waiting and trying to love a man ought to bind her to the man at last. Such certainly had not been her own idea. As far as she could at present look into her own future feelings, she did not think that she could ever bring herself to say that she would be this man’s wife. There was a solemnity about the position which had never come fully home to her before she had been thus placed. Everybody around her told her that the man’s happiness was really bound up in her reply. If this were so,—and she in truth believed that it was so,—was she not bound to give him every chance in her power? And yet because she still doubted, she was told by her friend that she was behaving badly! She would believe her friend, would confess her fault, and would tell her lover in what most respectful words of denial she could mould, that she would not be his wife. For herself personally, there would be no sorrow in this, and no regret.

Her ducking had given her time for all this thought; and then, having so decided, she went downstairs. She was met, of course, with various inquiries about her bath. Mr. Gilmore was all pity, as though the accident were the most serious thing in the world. Mr. Fenwick was all mirth, as though there had never been a better joke. Mrs. Fenwick, who was perhaps unwise in her impatience, was specially anxious that her two guests might be left together. She did not believe that Mary Lowther would ever say the final No; and yet she thought also that, if it were so, the time had quite come in which Mary Lowther ought to say the final Yes.

“Let us go down and look at the spot,” she said, after tea.

So they went down. It was a beautiful August night. There was no moon, and the twilight was over; but still it was not absolutely dark; and the air was as soft as a mother’s kiss to her sleeping child. They walked down together, four abreast, across the lawn, and thence they reached a certain green orchard path that led down to the river. Mrs. Fenwick purposely went on with the lover, leaving Mary with her husband, in order that there might be no appearance of a scheme. She would return with her husband, and then there might be a ramble among the paths, and the question would be pressed, and the thing might be settled.

They saw through the gloom the spot where Mary had scrambled, and the water which had then been bright and smiling, was now black and awful.

“To think that you should have been in there!” said Harry Gilmore, shuddering.

“To think that she should ever have got out again!” said the parson.

“It looks frightful in the dark,” said Mrs. Fenwick. “Come away, Frank. It makes me sick.” And the charming schemer took her husband’s arm, and continued the round of the garden. “I have been talking to her, and I think she would take him if he would ask her now.”

The other pair of course followed them. Mary’s mind was so fully made up, at this moment, that she almost wished that her companion might ask the question. She had been told that she was misusing him; and she would misuse him no longer. She had a firm No, as it were, within her grasp, and a resolution that she would not be driven from it. But he walked on beside her talking of the water, and of the danger, and of the chance of a cold, and got no nearer to the subject than to bid her think what suffering she would have caused had she failed to extricate herself from the pool. He also had made up his mind. Something had been said by himself of a certain day when last he had pleaded his cause; and that day would not come round till the morrow. He considered himself pledged to restrain himself till then; but on the morrow he would come to her.

There was a little gate which led from the parsonage garden through the churchyard to a field path, by which was the nearest way to Hampton Privets.

“I’ll leave you here,” he said, “because I don’t want to make Fenwick come out again to-night. You won’t mind going up through the garden alone?”

“Oh dear, no.”

“And, Miss Lowther,—pray, pray take care of yourself. I hardly think you ought to have been out again to-night.”

“It was nothing, Mr. Gilmore. You make infinitely too much of it.”

“How can I make too much of anything that regards you? You will be at home to-morrow?”

“Yes, I fancy so.”

“Do remain at home. I intend to come down after lunch. Do remain at home.” He held her by the hand as he spoke to her, and she promised him that she would obey him. He clearly was entitled to her obedience on such a point. Then she slowly made her way round the garden, and entered the house at the front door, some quarter of an hour after the others.

Why should she refuse him? What was it that she wanted in the world? She liked him, his manners, his character, his ways, his mode of life, and after a fashion she liked his person. If there was more of love in the world than this, she did not think that it would ever come in her way. Up to this time of her life she had never felt any such feeling. If not for her own sake, why should she not do it for him? Why should he not be made happy? She had risked a plunge in the water to get Flo her ball, and she liked him better than she liked Flo. It seemed that her mind had been altogether changed by that stroll through the dark alleys.

“Well,” said Janet, “how is it to be?”

“He is to come to-morrow, and I do not know how it will be,” she said, turning away to her own room.