“But I don’t think I really love you, Mr. Mullen.”

“I trust your eyes rather than your words—­and your eyes have told me, all unconsciously to yourself, your secret.”

“Well, I do love your sermons, but—–­”

“My sermons are myself.  There is nothing in my life, I trust, that belies my preaching.”

“I know how good you are, but honestly and truly, I don’t want to marry anybody.”

His smile hardened slowly on his face like an impression on metal that cools into solidity.  From the beginning he had conducted his courtship, as he had conducted his sacred office, with the manner of a gentleman and the infallibility of an apostle.  Doubt of his perfect fitness for either vocation had never entered his head.  Had it done so he would probably have dismissed it as one of the insidious suggestions of the lower man—­for the lower man was a creature who habitually disagreed with his opinions and whom his soul abhorred.

As he sat beside her, clerical, well-groomed, with his look of small yet solemn intelligence, she wondered seriously if he would, in spite of all opposition, have his way with her at last and pattern her to his liking?

“I am not in the least what you think me, Mr. Mullen—­I don’t know just how to say it—–­”

“There is but one thing you need know, dearest, and that is that you love me.  As our greatest poet has expressed it ’To know no more is woman’s happiest knowledge.’”

“But I can’t feel that you really—­really care for me.  How can you?”

With a tender gesture, he laid his free hand on hers while he looked into her downcast face.

“You allude, I suppose, to the sad fact of your birth,” he replied gently, “but after you have become my wife, you will, of course need no name but mine.”

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Mullen, but really I didn’t mean you to think—­Oh, there’s the mill and Abel looking out of the window.  Please, please don’t sit so close to me, and look as if we were discussing your sick parishioners.”

He obeyed her instantly, quite as circumspect as she in his regard for the proprieties.

“You are excited now, Molly dear, but you will not forbid my hoping that you will accept my proposal,” he remarked persuasively as the gig drew up to the Revercombs’ gate.

“Well, yes, if you’ll let me get down now, you may hope, if you wish to.”

Alighting over the wheel before he could draw off his glove and assist her, she hurried, under Abel’s eyes, to the porch, where Blossom Revercomb stood gazing happily in the direction of Jordan’s Journey.

CHAPTER X

THE REVEREND ORLANDO MULLEN PREACHES A SERMON

On the following Sunday, a mild autumn morning, Mr. Mullen preached one of his most impressive sermons from the text, “She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.”