He laughed, delighting in her naive sense of honesty. "There was a stone all right, I can assure you, and I blessed the excuse. All the same, I should have come back on some pretext or another. I could hardly have rung the front door bell and said I had observed a young lady with golden hair go through this door, and that I wanted to see her again. Now, could I?"
She turned away, confused, agitated, utterly unable to confront the tender banter in his eyes. But he had not quite done. As they went into the vicarage he asked boldly: "Can I come again, very soon, and talk to you in the garden?"
Though she made no answer he did not feel rebuffed.
CHAPTER III
SUCCESS
Some three weeks later George Coventry proposed to Rafella Forte, but not among the roses in the sunshine, as he had so often pictured, for rain was coming down with inconsiderate persistence. The proposal took place in the church porch, where they lingered after choir practice, hoping it might clear.
His visits had been frequent since the day of the sale; and once he had persuaded the vicar and his daughter to spend an afternoon at his mother's house, conveying them to and fro at his own expense in the ever-available wagonette supplied by the country town inn.
To-day he had arrived just as Rafella was about to start for the church, enveloped in a macintosh, holding a monstrous cotton umbrella over her head; and for the last hour he had sat patiently in a pew while school children droned out hymns around Rafella and the harmonium, staring at him throughout the performance with unblinking curiosity. Now the children had clattered away, Rafella had closed the harmonium and put everything straight, and they were alone in the porch; the church door, covered with notices, was closed behind them, and in front the rain streamed down on the huddled graves, the sunken, lichen-stained headstones, and the old-fashioned, coffin-shaped tombs.