“But,” said the gentleman, in a tone of the deepest interest, “shall you really return without regret?”

“Without regret?  Oh yes!”

“Regret nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Suppose,” he continued, in a suppressed tone of deep emotion—­“suppose that a man, young, rich, and perfectly aware of the value of your pure and unsullied nature, was to lay his hand and heart”—­

“I pray, I entreat you, say not another word,” interrupted Rose, breathlessly.  “If there should be any such, which is hardly possible, sooner than he should deign to make a proposal to me, I would tell him that before I came to visit my cousin, only the very night before, I became the betrothed of another.”

“Of some one, Rose, who took advantage of your ignorance of the world—­of your want of knowledge of society?”

“Oh no!” she replied, covering her face with her hand; “oh no! he is incapable of that.  He would have suffered me to leave Abbeyweld free of promise, but I would not.”

“And do you hold the same faith still Rose?  Think, has not what you have seen, and shared in, made you ambitious of something beyond a country life?  Your refined mind and genuine feeling, your taste—­do not, I implore you, deceive yourself.”

“I do not, sir; indeed, I do not.  Pardon me; I would not speak disrespectfully of those above me.  Of course, I have not been admitted into that familiarity which would lead me to comprehend what at present appears to me even more disturbed by the littleness of life than a country village.  Conventional forms have, I fear, little to do with elevation of mind; they seem to me the result of habit rather than of thought or feeling.  I know this, at least, ’All is not gold that glitters.’  I have seen a tree, fair to look at in the distance, and covered with green leaves, but when approached closely, the trunk was foul and hollowed by impurities, and when the blast came, it could not stand; even so with many, fair without and foul within, and the first adversity, the first great sorrow, over-throws them.”

“But this may be the case with the poor as well as the rich, in the country as well as the town.”

“I am sure of it, sir.  No station can be altogether free from impurity; but in the country the incitements to evil seem to me less numerous, and the temptations fewer by far; the most dangerous of all, a desire to shine, to climb above our fellows, less continual.  The middle class is there more healthy and independent.”

“And all this owing to the mere circumstance, think you, of situation?” interrupted the gentleman.

“I am only country bred, sir, as you know,” replied Rose, earnestly but meekly; “and the only advantage I have had has been in the society of one you have heard me mention before now—­our worthy rector—­and he says it would make all that is wrong come right, if people would only fear God and love their neighbour.”