He thought he had better begin at once.

“Mary, it’s no new story I’m going to speak about.  Since we were boy and girl I ha’ loved you above father and mother and all.  And now, Mary, I’m foreman at the works, and I’ve a home to offer you, and a heart as true as ever man had to love you and cherish you.  Darling, say that you’ll be mine.”

Mary could not speak at once.

“Mary, they say, silence gives consent,” he whispered.

“No, not with me!  I can never be your wife.”

“Oh, Mary, think awhile!” he urged.

“Jem, it cannot be,” she said calmly, although she trembled from head to foot.  “Once for all, I will never marry you.”

“And this is the end!” he cried passionately.  “Mary, you’ll hear, maybe, of me as a drunkard, and maybe as a thief, and maybe as a murderer.  Remember! it’s your cruelty that will have made me what I feel I shall become.”

He rushed out of the house.

When he had gone, Mary lay half across the dresser, her head hidden in her hands, and her body shaken with violent sobs.  For these few minutes had unveiled her heart to her; it had convinced her that she loved Jem above all persons or things.  What were the wealth and prosperity that Mr. Harry Carson might bring to her now that she had suddenly discovered the passionate secret of her soul?

Her first duty, she saw, was to reject the advances of her rich lover.  She avoided him as far as possible, and slighted him when he forced his presence upon her.  And how was she to redress the wrong she had done to Jem in denying him her heart?  She took counsel with her friend, Margaret Legh.  When Mary had first known Margaret and her grandfather, Job Legh—­an old man who belonged to the class of Manchester workmen who are warm and devoted followers of science, a man whose home was like a wizard’s dwelling, filled with impaled insects and books and instruments—­Margaret had a secret fear of blindness.  The fear had since been realised, but she remained the quiet, sensible, tender-hearted girl she had been before her great deprivation.  She opposed Mary’s notion of writing a letter to Jem.

“You must just wait and be patient,” she advised; “being patient is the hardest work we have to do through life, I take it.  Waiting is far more difficult than doing; but it’s one of God’s lessons we must learn, one way or another.”

So Mary waited.  But Jem took his disappointment as final, and her hopes of seeing him were always baffled.

John Barton, on the night of Jem’s proposal, had gone to his union.  The members of the union were all desperate men, ready for anything; made ready by want.  Barton himself was out of work.  He had seen much of the bitterness of poverty in Manchester; now he was feeling the pinch of it himself.