CHAPTER IV.

“How kind of you!” said the rector’s sister, enthusiastically; “but I thought you would come and help us.”

And as Marcella took some of her burdens from her, Miss Harden kissed Marcella’s cheek with a sort of timid eagerness.  She had fallen in love with Miss Boyce from the beginning, was now just advanced to this privilege of kissing, and being entirely convinced that her new friend possessed all virtues and all knowledge, found it not difficult to hold that she had been divinely sent to sustain her brother and herself in the disheartening task of civilising Mellor.  Mary Harden was naturally a short, roundly made girl, neither pretty nor plain, with grey-blue eyes, a shy manner, and a heart all goodness.  Her brother was like unto her—­also short, round, and full-faced, with the same attractive eyes.  Both were singularly young in aspect—­a boy and girl pair.  Both had the worn, pinched look which Mrs. Boyce complained of, and which, indeed, went oddly with their whole physique.  It was as though creatures built for a normal life of easy give and take with their fellows had fallen upon some unfitting and jarring experience.  One striking difference, indeed, there was between them, for amid the brother’s timidity and sweetness there lay, clearly to be felt and seen, the consciousness of the priest—­nascent and immature, but already urging and characteristic.

Only one face of the three showed any other emotion than quick pleasure at the sight of Marcella Boyce.  Aldous Raeburn was clearly embarrassed thereby.  Indeed, as he laid down his gun outside the low churchyard wall, while Marcella and the Hardens were greeting, that generally self-possessed though modest person was conscious of a quite disabling perturbation of mind.  Why in the name of all good manners and decency had he allowed himself to be discovered in shooting trim, on that particular morning, by Mr. Boyce’s daughter on her father’s land, and within a stone’s throw of her father’s house?  Was he not perfectly well aware of the curt note which his grandfather had that morning despatched to the new owner of Mellor?  Had he not ineffectually tried to delay execution the night before, thereby puzzling and half-offending his grandfather?  Had not the incident weighed on him ever since, wounding an admiration and sympathy which seemed to have stolen upon him in the dark, during these few weeks since he had made Miss Boyce’s acquaintance, so strong and startling did he all in a moment feel them to be?

And then to intrude upon her thus, out of nothing apparently but sheer moth-like incapacity to keep away!  The church footpath indeed was public property, and Miss Harden’s burdens had cried aloud to any passing male to help her.  But why in this neighbourhood at all?—­why not rather on the other side of the county?  He could have scourged himself on the spot for an unpardonable breach of manners and feeling.