To speak to Margaret on that day, as I wished to speak to her, was impossible.  To approach the subject of the canary’s death afterwards, was useless.  If I only hinted in the gentlest way, and with the strongest sympathy for the loss of the bird, at the distress and astonishment she had caused me by the extremities to which she had allowed her passion to hurry her, a burst of tears was sure to be her only reply—­just the reply, of all others, which was best calculated to silence me.  If I had been her husband in fact, as well as in name; if I had been her father, her brother, or her friend, I should have let her first emotions have their way, and then have expostulated with her afterwards.  But I was her lover still; and, to my eyes, Margaret’s tears made virtues even of Margaret’s faults.

Such occurrences as these, happening but at rare intervals, formed the only interruptions to the generally even and happy tenour of our intercourse.  Weeks and weeks glided away, and not a hasty or a hard word passed between us.  Neither, after one preliminary difference had been adjusted, did any subsequent disagreement take place between Mr. Sherwin and me.  This last element in the domestic tranquillity of North Villa was, however, less attributable to his forbearance, or to mine, than to the private interference of Mr. Mannion.

For some days after my interview with the managing clerk, at his own house, I had abstained from calling his offered services into requisition.  I was not conscious of any reason for this course of conduct.  All that had been said, all that had happened during the night of the storm, had produced a powerful, though vague impression on me.  Strange as it may appear, I could not determine whether my brief but extraordinary experience of my new friend had attracted me towards him, or repelled me from him.  I felt an unwillingness to lay myself under an obligation to him, which was not the result of pride, or false delicacy, or sullenness, or suspicion—­it was an inexplicable unwillingness, that sprang from the fear of encountering some heavy responsibility; but of what nature I could not imagine.  I delayed and held back, by instinct; and, on his side, Mr. Mannion made no further advances.  He maintained the same manner, and continued the same habits, during his intercourse with the family at North Villa, which I had observed as characterising him before I took shelter from the storm, in his house.  He never referred again to the conversation of that evening, when we now met.

Margaret’s behaviour, when I mentioned to her Mr. Mannion’s willingness to be useful to us both, rather increased than diminished the vague uncertainties which perplexed me, on the subject of accepting or rejecting his overtures.