‘But he did not ask me to marry him.’

‘Then I do not understand anything about it.’

‘He asked me to love him.’

‘But he meant you to be his wife?’

‘Oh yes he meant that of course.’

‘And what did you say?’ asked Priscilla.

‘That I didn’t love him,’ replied Nora.

‘And that was the truth?’

‘Yes it was the truth.’

‘And what do you regret? that you didn’t tell him a lie?’

‘No not that,’ said Nora slowly.

’What then?  You cannot regret that you have not basely deceived a man who has treated you with a loving generosity?’ They walked on silent for a few yards, and then Priscilla repeated her question.  ’You cannot mean that you are sorry that you did not persuade yourself to do evil?’

’I don’t want to go back to the islands, and to lose myself there, and to be nobody; that is what I mean.  And I might have been so much!  Could one step from the very highest rung of the ladder to the very lowest and not feel it?’

‘But you have gone up the ladder if you only knew it,’ said Priscilla.  ’There was a choice given to you between the foulest mire of the clay of the world, and the sunlight of the very God.  You have chosen the sunlight, and you are crying after the clay!  I cannot pity you; but I can esteem you, and love you, and believe in you.  And I do.  You’ll ’get yourself right at last, and there’s my hand on it, if you’ll take it.’  Nora took the hand that was offered to her, held it in her own for some seconds, and then walked back to the house and up to her own room in silence.

The post used to come into Nuncombe Putney at about eight in the morning, carried thither by a wooden-legged man who rode a donkey.  There is a general understanding that the wooden-legged men in country parishes should be employed as postmen, owing to the great steadiness of demeanour which a wooden leg is generally found to produce.  It may be that such men are slower in their operations than would be biped postmen; but as all private employers of labour demand labourers with two legs, it is well that the lame and halt should find a refuge in the less exacting service of the government.  The one-legged man who rode his donkey into Nuncombe Putney would reach his post-office not above half an hour after his proper time; but he was very slow in stumping round the village, and seldom reached the Clock House much before ten.  On a certain morning two or three days after the conversation just recorded it was past ten when he brought two letters to the door, one for Mrs Trevelyan, and one for Mrs Stanbury.  The ladies had finished their breakfast, and were seated together at an open window.  As was usual, the letters were given into Priscilla’s hands, and the newspaper which accompanied them into those of Mrs Trevelyan, its undoubted owner.  When her letter was handed to her, she looked at the address closely and then walked away with it into her own room.