“Yes.”

“You are not going to be married to Harold Transome, or to be rich?”

“No.”

“Why?” said Felix in rather a low tone, leaning his elbow on the table, and resting his head on his hand while he looked at her.

“I did not wish to marry him, or to be rich.”

“You have given it all up?” said Felix, leaning forward a little and speaking in a still lower tone.  “Could you share the life of a poor man, then, Esther?”

“If I thought well enough of him,” she said, with a smile, and a pretty movement of her head.

“Have you considered well what it would be?—­that it would be a very bare and simple life? and the people I shall live among, Esther?  They have not just the same follies and vices as the rich, but they have their own forms of folly and vice.  It is very serious, Esther.”

“I know it is serious,” said Esther, looking up at him.  “Since I have been at Transome Court I have seen many things very seriously.  If I had not, I should not have left what I did leave.  I made a deliberate choice.”

She could not tell him that at Transome Court, all that finally seemed balanced against her love for him, was the offer of a silken bondage that arrested all motive, and was nothing better than a well-cushioned despair.  A vision of being restless amidst ease, of being languid among all appliances had quickened her resignation of the Transome estates.

Esther explained, however, that she thought of retaining a little of the wealth.

“How?” said Felix, anxiously.  “What do you mean?”

“I think even of two pounds a week:  one needn’t live up to the splendour of all that, you know:  we might live as simply as you liked.  And then I think of a little income for your mother, and a little income for my father, to save him from being dependent when he is no longer able to preach!”

Felix put his hand on her shoulder, said, lifting up his eyes with a smile: 

“Why, I shall be able to set up a great library, and lend the books!”

They laughed merrily, each holding the other’s arms, like girl and boy.  There was the ineffable sense of youth in common.

Then Felix leaned forward, that their lips might meet, and after that his eyes roved tenderly over her face and curls.

“I’m a rough, severe fellow, Esther.  Shall you never repent?—­never be inwardly reproaching me that I was not a man who could have shared your wealth?  Are you quite sure?”

The very next May, Felix and Esther were married.  Everyone in those days was married at the parish church; but Mr. Lyon was not satisfied without an additional private solemnity, “so that he might have a more enlarged utterance of joy and supplication.”

It was a very simple wedding; but no wedding, even the gayest, ever raised so much interest and debate in Treby Magna.  Even the very great people of the county went to the church to look at this bride, who had renounced wealth, and chosen to be the wife of a man who said he would always be poor.