My doubts—­or to speak more correctly, my convictions—­were confirmed by Miss Halcombe’s language and manner when I saw her again later in the day.  She was suspiciously brief and reserved in telling me the result of her interview with her sister.  Miss Fairlie, it appeared, had listened quietly while the affair of the letter was placed before her in the right point of view, but when Miss Halcombe next proceeded to say that the object of Sir Percival’s visit at Limmeridge was to prevail on her to let a day be fixed for the marriage she checked all further reference to the subject by begging for time.  If Sir Percival would consent to spare her for the present, she would undertake to give him his final answer before the end of the year.  She pleaded for this delay with such anxiety and agitation, that Miss Halcombe had promised to use her influence, if necessary, to obtain it, and there, at Miss Fairlie’s earnest entreaty, all further discussion of the marriage question had ended.

The purely temporary arrangement thus proposed might have been convenient enough to the young lady, but it proved somewhat embarrassing to the writer of these lines.  That morning’s post had brought a letter from my partner, which obliged me to return to town the next day by the afternoon train.  It was extremely probable that I should find no second opportunity of presenting myself at Limmeridge House during the remainder of the year.  In that case, supposing Miss Fairlie ultimately decided on holding to her engagement, my necessary personal communication with her, before I drew her settlement, would become something like a downright impossibility, and we should be obliged to commit to writing questions which ought always to be discussed on both sides by word of mouth.  I said nothing about this difficulty until Sir Percival had been consulted on the subject of the desired delay.  He was too gallant a gentleman not to grant the request immediately.  When Miss Halcombe informed me of this I told her that I must absolutely speak to her sister before I left Limmeridge, and it was, therefore, arranged that I should see Miss Fairlie in her own sitting-room the next morning.  She did not come down to dinner, or join us in the evening.  Indisposition was the excuse, and I thought Sir Percival looked, as well he might, a little annoyed when he heard of it.

The next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, I went up to Miss Fairlie’s sitting-room.  The poor girl looked so pale and sad, and came forward to welcome me so readily and prettily, that the resolution to lecture her on her caprice and indecision, which I had been forming all the way upstairs, failed me on the spot.  I led her back to the chair from which she had risen, and placed myself opposite to her.  Her cross-grained pet greyhound was in the room, and I fully expected a barking and snapping reception.  Strange to say, the whimsical little brute falsified my expectations by jumping into my lap and poking its sharp muzzle familiarly into my hand the moment I sat down.