This question was not articulately answered, but the reply was satisfactory.  Then the couple parted.

So it happened that in a few brief weeks this quiet young man had drifted into a disgraceful intrigue.  He did not think it disgraceful, because he had not reflected at all.  The future was barred to him, and he lived from one day to another content with the joy that the day brought.  He had made promises with rash profusion, and his promises had been believed.  Further and further he had been drawn, till the fire of his blood made him fancy that he was proceeding voluntarily.

To Mary Casely the whole affair seemed quite natural.  She knew nothing about the pitiful stories of village maidens which make so much of the stock of fiction.  She had never read a story, so she fancied that her secret meetings were part of the fixed order of life.  She happened to have a sweetheart who dressed well and spoke beautifully, and that was all the difference between her and other girls.  Besides this, she was a singularly determined young woman.  She had made up her mind to marry the young Squire; he in his folly had given no single hint of the vast, the insuperable difficulties that lay in the way; and so the bitter business went on.

The summer passed into autumn, and late November came.  Such an affair as that of Mary Casely and the young Squire could not be long kept out of the reach of acrid village gossip.  Once or twice, as young Ellington walked out of church from the pew by the chancel, he fancied he saw the gardeners and farm-people looking at him with intelligence, and he felt something catching at his throat.

When December came in, his misery had grown to acuteness.  His old passive wretchedness had given way to a settled nervous dread which wore the brightness from his comely face.

One grey afternoon he took the old road to the sea again.  The wind was crying drearily, and the trees creaked as they swayed to each swift gust.  He shivered when he came in sight of the sea, for the low sky was leaden.  The very foam looked dull.  Every few seconds came a muffled boom, as a roller shattered itself against the rocks, and a tower of spray shot up and fell on the sodden grass.

The wild flowers were gone, and the bents bowed themselves cheerlessly.

How many things else were gone!  How many things else were cheerless!

He turned round when he could bear waiting no longer, and prepared to carry his miseries home.  Something ill must have happened.  At the bluff of the shrubbery where he had first seen Mary pass out of sight he heard a step, but it was not that sharp, steady step he had learnt to know so well.  He was face to face with Mr. Casely.  It had come at last.  For weeks he had foreshadowed this meeting in his dreams, and the fear had so worked on him that he had learned a trick of glancing suddenly over his shoulder.  Casely looked steadily down at the young Squire for a time that seemed long, and then, unclenching his tense jaw, said quietly—­