She reserved her answer till the next day, and came into his room with a solemn face.  ‘I cannot do what you wished!’ she said passionately.  ’It is too much to ask.  My whole life ha’ been passed in this way.’  Her words and manner showed that before entering she had been struggling with herself in private, and that the contention had been strong.

Stockdale turned pale, but he spoke quietly.  ’Then, Lizzy, we must part.  I cannot go against my principles in this matter, and I cannot make my profession a mockery.  You know how I love you, and what I would do for you; but this one thing I cannot do.’

‘But why should you belong to that profession?’ she burst out.  ’I have got this large house; why can’t you marry me, and live here with us, and not be a Methodist preacher any more?  I assure you, Richard, it is no harm, and I wish you could only see it as I do!  We only carry it on in winter:  in summer it is never done at all.  It stirs up one’s dull life at this time o’ the year, and gives excitement, which I have got so used to now that I should hardly know how to do ’ithout it.  At nights, when the wind blows, instead of being dull and stupid, and not noticing whether it do blow or not, your mind is afield, even if you are not afield yourself; and you are wondering how the chaps are getting on; and you walk up and down the room, and look out o’ window, and then you go out yourself, and know your way about as well by night as by day, and have hairbreadth escapes from old Latimer and his fellows, who are too stupid ever to really frighten us, and only make us a bit nimble.’

’He frightened you a little last night, anyhow:  and I would advise you to drop it before it is worse.’

She shook her head.  ’No, I must go on as I have begun.  I was born to it.  It is in my blood, and I can’t be cured.  O, Richard, you cannot think what a hard thing you have asked, and how sharp you try me when you put me between this and my love for ‘ee!’

Stockdale was leaning with his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hands over his eyes.  ‘We ought never to have met, Lizzy,’ he said.  ’It was an ill day for us!  I little thought there was anything so hopeless and impossible in our engagement as this.  Well, it is too late now to regret consequences in this way.  I have had the happiness of seeing you and knowing you at least.’

‘You dissent from Church, and I dissent from State,’ she said.  ’And I don’t see why we are not well matched.’

He smiled sadly, while Lizzy remained looking down, her eyes beginning to overflow.

That was an unhappy evening for both of them, and the days that followed were unhappy days.  Both she and he went mechanically about their employments, and his depression was marked in the village by more than one of his denomination with whom he came in contact.  But Lizzy, who passed her days indoors, was unsuspected of being the cause:  for it was generally understood that a quiet engagement to marry existed between her and her cousin Owlett, and had existed for some time.