“You know what you undertake, then?”

“I do.”

He now smiled:  and not a bitter or a sad smile, but one well pleased and deeply gratified.

“And when will you commence the exercise of your function?”

“I will go to my house to-morrow, and open the school, if you like, next week.”

“Very well:  so be it.”

He rose and walked through the room.  Standing still, he again looked at me.  He shook his head.

“What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?” I asked.

“You will not stay at Morton long:  no, no!”

“Why?  What is your reason for saying so?”

“I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which promises the maintenance of an even tenor in life.”

“I am not ambitious.”

He started at the word “ambitious.”  He repeated, “No.  What made you think of ambition?  Who is ambitious?  I know I am:  but how did you find it out?”

“I was speaking of myself.”

“Well, if you are not ambitious, you are —­ " He paused.

“What?”

“I was going to say, impassioned:  but perhaps you would have misunderstood the word, and been displeased.  I mean, that human affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you.  I am sure you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of stimulus:  any more than I can be content,” he added, with emphasis, “to live here buried in morass, pent in with mountains —­ my nature, that God gave me, contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralysed —­ made useless.  You hear now how I contradict myself.  I, who preached contentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood and drawers of water in God’s service —­ I, His ordained minister, almost rave in my restlessness.  Well, propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.”

He left the room.  In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than in the whole previous month:  yet still he puzzled me.

Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day approached for leaving their brother and their home.  They both tried to appear as usual; but the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could not be entirely conquered or concealed.  Diana intimated that this would be a different parting from any they had ever yet known.  It would probably, as far as St. John was concerned, be a parting for years:  it might be a parting for life.

“He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves,” she said:  “natural affection and feelings more potent still.  St. John looks quiet, Jane; but he hides a fever in his vitals.  You would think him gentle, yet in some things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of it is, my conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe decision:  certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it.  It is right, noble, Christian:  yet it breaks my heart!” And the tears gushed to her fine eyes.  Mary bent her head low over her work.