The letter which had summoned Harry to the parsonage had been from his mother, and had begged him to come to Clavering at once, as trouble had come upon them from an unexpected source. His father had quarrelled with Mr. Saul. The rector and the curate had had an interview, in which there had been high words, and Mr. Clavering had refused to see Mr. Saul again. Fanny also was in great trouble,—and the parish was, as it were, in hot water. Mrs. Clavering thought that Harry had better run down to Clavering, and see Mr. Saul. Harry, not unwillingly, acceded to his mother\'s request, much wondering at the source of this new misfortune. As to Fanny, she, as he believed, had held out no encouragement to Mr. Saul\'s overtures. When Mr. Saul had proposed to her,—making that first offer of which Harry had been aware,—nothing could have been more steadfast than her rejection of the gentleman\'s hand. Harry had regarded Mr. Saul as little less than mad to think of such a thing, but, thinking of him as a man very different in his ways and feelings from other men, had believed that he might go on at Clavering comfortably as curate in spite of that little accident. It appeared, however, that he was not going on comfortably; but Harry, when he left London, could not quite imagine how such violent discomfort should have arisen that the rector and the curate should be unable to meet each other. If the reader will allow me, I will go back a little and explain this.

The reader already knows what Fanny\'s brother did not know,—namely, that Mr. Saul had pressed his suit again, and had pressed it very strongly; and he also knows that Fanny\'s reception of the second offer was very different from her reception of the first. She had begun to doubt;—to doubt whether her first judgment as to Mr. Saul\'s character had not been unjust,—to doubt whether, in addressing her, he was not right, seeing that his love for her was so strong,—to doubt whether she did not like him better than she had thought she did,—to doubt whether an engagement with a penniless curate was in truth a position utterly to be reprehended and avoided. Young penniless curates must love somebody as well as young beneficed vicars and rectors. And then Mr. Saul pleaded his cause so well!

She did not at once speak to her mother on the matter, and the fact that she had a secret made her very wretched. She had left Mr. Saul in doubt, giving him no answer, and he had said that he would ask her again in a few days what was to be his fate. She hardly knew how to tell her mother of this till she had told herself what were her own wishes. She thoroughly desired to have her mother in her confidence, and promised herself that it should be so before Mr. Saul renewed his suit. He was a man who was never hurried or impatient in his doings. But Fanny put off the interview with her mother,—put off her own final resolution, till it was too late, and Mr. Saul came upon her again, when she was but ill-prepared for him.

A woman, when she doubts whether she loves or does not love, is inclined five parts out of six towards the man of whom she is thinking. When a woman doubts she is lost, the cynics say. I simply assert, being no cynic, that when a woman doubts she is won. The more Fanny thought of Mr. Saul, the more she felt that he was not the man for which she had first taken him,—that he was of larger dimensions as regarded spirit, manhood, and heart, and better entitled to a woman\'s love. She would not tell herself that she was attached to him; but in all her arguments with herself against him, she rested her objection mainly on the fact that he had but seventy pounds a year. And then the threatened attack, the attack that was to be final, came upon her before she was prepared for it!

They had been together as usual during the intervening time. It was, indeed, impossible that they should not be together. Since she had first begun to doubt about Mr. Saul, she had been more diligent than heretofore in visiting the poor and in attending to her school, as though she were recognizing the duty which would specially be hers if she were to marry such a one as he. And thus they had been brought together more than ever. All this her mother had seen, and seeing, had trembled; but she had not thought it wise to say anything till Fanny should speak. Fanny was very good and very prudent. It could not be but that Fanny should know how impossible must be such a marriage. As to the rector, he had no suspicions on the matter. Saul had made himself an ass on one occasion, and there had been an end of it. As a curate Saul was invaluable, and therefore the fact of his having made himself an ass had been forgiven him. It was thus that the rector looked at it.

It was hardly more than ten days since the last walk in Cumberly Lane when Mr. Saul renewed the attack. He did it again on the same spot, and at the same hour of the day. Twice a week, always on the same days, he was in the chapel up at this end of the parish, and on these days he could always find Fanny on her way home. When he put his head in at the little school door and asked for her, her mind misgave her. He had not walked home with her since, and though he had been in the school with her often, had always left her there, going about his own business, as though he were by no means desirous of her company. Now the time had come, and Fanny felt that she was not prepared. But she took up her hat, and went out to him, knowing that there was no escape.

"Miss Clavering," said he, "have you thought of what I was saying to you?" To this she made no answer, but merely played with the point of the parasol which she held in her hand. "You cannot but have thought of it," he continued. "You could not dismiss it altogether from your thoughts."

"I have thought about it, of course," she said.

"And what does your mind say? Or rather what does your heart say? Both should speak, but I would sooner hear the heart first."

"I am sure, Mr. Saul, that it is quite impossible."

"In what way impossible?"

"Papa would not allow it."

"Have you asked him?"

"Oh, dear, no."

"Or Mrs. Clavering?"

Fanny blushed as she remembered how she had permitted the days to go by without asking her mother\'s counsel. "No; I have spoken to no one. Why should I, when I knew that it is impossible?"

"May I speak to Mr. Clavering?" To this Fanny made no immediate answer, and then Mr. Saul urged the question again. "May I speak to your father?"

Fanny felt that she was assenting, even in that she did not answer such a question by an immediate refusal of her permission; and yet she did not mean to assent. "Miss Clavering," he said, "if you regard me with affection, you have no right to refuse me this request. I tell you so boldly. If you feel for me that love which would enable you to accept me as your husband, it is your duty to tell me so,—your duty to me, to yourself, and to your God."

Fanny did not quite see the thing in this light, and yet she did not wish to contradict him. At this moment she forgot that in order to put herself on perfectly firm ground, she should have gone back to the first hypothesis, and assured him that she did not feel any such regard for him. Mr. Saul, whose intellect was more acute, took advantage of her here, and chose to believe that that matter of her affection was now conceded to him. He knew what he was doing well, and is open to a charge of some jesuitry. "Mr. Saul," said Fanny, with grave prudence, "it cannot be right for people to marry when they have nothing to live upon." When she had shown him so plainly that she had no other piece left on the board to play than this, the game may be said to have been won on his side.

"If that be your sole objection," said he, "you cannot but think it right that I and your father should discuss it." To this she made no reply whatever, and they walked along the lane for a considerable way in silence. Mr. Saul would have been glad to have had the interview over now, feeling that at any future meeting he would have stronger power of assuming the position of an accepted lover than he would do now. Another man would have desired to get from her lips a decided word of love,—to take her hand, perhaps, and to feel some response from it,—to go further than this, as is not unlikely, and plead for the happy indulgences of an accepted lover. But Mr. Saul abstained, and was wise in abstaining. She had not so far committed herself, but that she might even now have drawn back, had he pressed her too hard. For hand-pressing, and the titillations of love-making, Mr. Saul was not adapted; but he was a man who, having once loved, would love on to the end.

The way, however, was too long to be completed without further speech. Fanny, as she walked, was struggling to find some words by which she might still hold her ground, but the words were not forthcoming. It seemed to herself that she was being carried away by this man, because she had suddenly lost her remembrance of all negatives. The more she struggled the more she failed, and at last gave it up in despair. Let Mr. Saul say what he would, it was impossible that they should be married. All his arguments about duty were nonsense. It could not be her duty to marry a man who would have to starve in his attempt to keep her. She wished she had told him at first that she did not love him, but that seemed to be too late now. The moment that she was in the house she would go to her mother and tell her everything.

"Miss Clavering," said he, "I shall see your father to-morrow."

"No, no," she ejaculated.

"I shall certainly do so in any event. I shall either tell him that I must leave the parish,—explaining to him why I must go; or I shall ask him to let me remain here in the hope that I may become his son-in-law. You will not now tell me that I am to go?" Fanny was again silent, her memory failing her as to either negative or affirmative that would be of service. "To stay here hopeless would be impossible to me. Now I am not hopeless. Now I am full of hope. I think I could be happy, though I had to wait as Jacob waited."

"And perhaps have Jacob\'s consolation," said Fanny. She was lost by the joke and he knew it. A grim smile of satisfaction crossed his thin face as he heard it, and there was a feeling of triumph at his heart. "I am hardly fitted to be a patriarch, as the patriarchs were of old," he said. "Though the seven years should be prolonged to fourteen I do not think I should seek any Leah."

They were soon at the gate, and his work for that evening was done. He would go home to his solitary room at a neighbouring farm-house, and sit in triumph as he eat his morsel of cold mutton by himself. He, without any advantage of a person to back him, poor, friendless, hitherto conscious that he was unfitted to mix even in ordinary social life—he had won the heart of the fairest woman he had ever seen. "You will give me your hand at parting," he said, whereupon she tendered it to him with her eyes fixed upon the ground. "I hope we understand each other," he continued. "You may at any rate understand this, that I love you with all my heart and all my strength. If things prosper with me, all my prosperity shall be for you. If there be no prosperity for me, you shall be my only consolation in this world. You are my Alpha and my Omega, my first and last, my beginning and end,—my everything, my all." Then he turned away and left her, and there had come no negative from her lips. As far as her lips were concerned no negative was any longer possible to her.

She went into the house knowing that she must at once seek her mother; but she allowed herself first to remain for some half-hour in her own bedroom, preparing the words that she would use. The interview she knew would be difficult,—much more difficult than it would have been before her last walk with Mr. Saul; and the worst of it was that she could not quite make up her mind as to what it was that she wished to say. She waited till she should hear her mother\'s step on the stairs. At last Mrs. Clavering came up to dress, and then Fanny, following her quickly into her bedroom, abruptly began.

"Mamma," she said, "I want to speak to you very much."

"Well, my dear?"

"But you mustn\'t be in a hurry, mamma." Mrs. Clavering looked at her watch, and declaring that it still wanted three-quarters of an hour to dinner, promised that she would not be very much in a hurry.

"Mamma, Mr. Saul has been speaking to me again."

"Has he, my dear? You cannot, of course, help it if he chooses to speak to you, but he ought to know that it is very foolish. It must end in his having to leave us."

"That is what he says, mamma. He says he must go away unless—"

"Unless what?"

"Unless I will ............