“I am in time, Mrs Crump, am I not?” she said, as she walked into the post-office.

“Of course you be,—­for the next half-hour.  T’ postman he bain’t stirred from t’ ale’us yet.  Just put it into t’ box wull ye?”

“But you won’t leave it there?”

“Leave it there!  Did you ever hear the like of that?  If you’re afeared to put it in, you can take it away; that’s all about it, Miss Lily.”  And then Mrs Crump turned away to her avocations at the washing-tub.  Mrs Crump had a bad temper, but perhaps she had some excuse.  A separate call was made upon her time with reference to almost every letter brought to her office, and for all this, as she often told her friends in profound disgust, she received as salary no more than “tuppence farden a day.  It don’t find me in shoe-leather; no more it don’t.”  As Mrs Crump was never seen out of her own house, unless it was in church once a month, this latter assertion about her shoe-leather could hardly have been true.

Lily had received another letter, and had answered it before Eames made his promised visit to Allington.  He, as will be remembered, had also had a correspondence.  He had answered Miss Roper’s letter, and had since that been living in fear of two things; in a lesser fear of some terrible rejoinder from Amelia, and in a greater fear of a more terrible visit from his lady-love.  Were she to swoop down in very truth upon his Guestwick home, and declare herself to his mother and sister as his affianced bride, what mode of escape would then be left for him?  But this she had not yet done, nor had she even answered his cruel missive.

“What an ass I am to be afraid of her!” he said to himself as he walked along under the elms of Guestwick manor, which overspread the road to Allington.  When he first went over to Allington after his return home, he had mounted himself on horseback, and had gone forth brilliant with spurs, and trusting somewhat to the glories of his dress and gloves.  But he had then known nothing of Lily’s engagement.  Now he was contented to walk; and as he had taken up his slouched hat and stick in the passage of his mother’s house, he had been very indifferent as to his appearance.  He walked quickly along the road, taking for the first three miles the shade of the Guestwick elms, and keeping his feet on the broad greensward which skirts the outside of the earl’s palings.  “What an ass I am to be afraid of her!” And as he swung his big stick in his hand, striking a tree here and there, and knocking the stones from his path, he began to question himself in earnest, and to be ashamed of his position in the world.  “Nothing on earth shall make me marry her,” he said; “not if they bring a dozen actions against me.  She knows as well as I do, that I have never intended to marry her.  It’s a cheat from beginning to end.  If she comes down here, I’ll tell her so before my mother.”  But as the vision of her sudden arrival came before his eyes, he acknowledged to himself that he still held her in great fear.  He had told her that he loved her.  He had written as much as that.  If taxed with so much, he must confess his sin.