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, and then in that of her daughter. "But oh! how could I--how could I help it?" was the cry of Mary's own conscience and personality.
She turned with painful eagerness to Meynell. "How did you think her?--how does she strike you?"
"Physically?" He chose his words. "She is so beautiful! But--sometimes--I think she looks frail."
The tears sprang to Mary's eyes. She quickly threw herself upon his misgiving, and tried to argue it away, both in herself and him. She dwelt upon her mother's improvement in sleep and appetite, her cheerfulness, her increased power of walking; she was insistent, almost resentful, her white brow furrowed with pain, even while her hand lay warm in Meynell's. He must needs comfort her; must needs disavow his own impression. After all, what value had such an impression beside the judgment of her daily and hourly watchfulness?--the favourable opinion too, so she insisted, of their local doctor.
As they walked home, he startled her by saying that he should only have three days in the valley.
"Three days!" She looked her remonstrance.
"You know the trial begins next week?"
Yes, she knew, but had understood that the pleadings were all ready, and that a North-Western train would take him to London in six hours.
"I have to preach at St. Hilda's, Westminster," he said, with a shrug, and a look of distaste.
Mary asked questions, and discovered that the sermon would no doubt be made the opportunity for something like a demonstration; and that he shrank from the thought of it.
She perceived, indeed, a certain general flagging of the merely combative forces in him, not without dismay. Such moments of recoil are natural to such men--half saints, half organizers. The immediate effect of her perception of it was to call out something heroic and passionate in herself. She was very sweet, and very young; there were eighteen years between them; and yet in these very first hours of their engagement, he felt her to be not only rest, but inspir