‘Leave me!’ he said, startled by the serious and almost solemn tone of her voice.  ‘Do you mean for always?’

‘If I were to marry, papa?’

’Oh, marry!  No; that would not make me unhappy.  It would make me very happy, Patty, to see you married to a man you would love;—­very, very happy; though my days would be desolate without you.’

‘That is it, papa.  What would you do if I went from you?’

’What would it matter, Patty?  I should be free, at any rate, from a load which often presses heavy on me now.  What will you do when I shall leave you?  A few more years and all will be over with me.  But who is it, love?  Has anybody said anything to you?’

’It was only an idea, papa.  I don’t often think of such a thing; but I did think of it then.’  And so the subject was allowed to pass by.  This had happened before the day of the second arrival had been absolutely fixed and made known to Miss Woolsworthy.

And then that second arrival took place.  The reader may have understood from the words with which Miss Le Smyrger authorized her nephew to make his second visit to Oxney Colne that Miss Woolsworthy’s passion was not altogether unauthorized.  Captain Broughton had been told that he was not to come unless he came with a certain purpose; and having been so told, he still persisted in coming.  There can be no doubt but that he well understood the purport to which his aunt alluded.  ’I shall assuredly come,’ he had said.  And true to his word, he was now there.

Patience knew exactly the hour at which he must arrive at the station at Newton Abbot, and the time also which it would take to travel over those twelve up-hill miles from the station to Oxney.  It need hardly be said that she paid no visit to Miss Le Smyrger’s house on that afternoon; but she might have known something of Captain Broughton’s approach without going thither.  His road to the Colne passed by the parsonage-gate, and had Patience sat even at her bedroom window she must have seen him.  But on such an evening she would not sit at her bedroom window;—­she would do nothing which would force her to accuse herself of a restless longing for her lover’s coming.  It was for him to seek her.  If he chose to do so, he knew the way to the parsonage.

Miss Le Smyrger—­good, dear, honest, hearty Miss Le Smyrger, was in a fever of anxiety on behalf of her friend.  It was not that she wished her nephew to marry Patience,—­or rather that she had entertained any such wish when he first came among them.  She was not given to match-making, and moreover thought, or had thought within herself, that they of Oxney Colne could do very well without any admixture from Eaton Square.  Her plan of life had been that when old Mr. Woolsworthy was taken away from Dartmoor, Patience should live with her, and that when she also shuffled off her coil, then Patience Woolsworthy should be the maiden-mistress of Oxney Colne—­of Oxney Colne and of Mr.