Mary put on her hat and walked off at once through the garden and across the fields, and into the Privets; and close to the house she met her lover. He did not see her till he heard her step, and then turned short round, almost as though fearing something.
"Harry," she said, "those jewels have come. Oh, dear. They are not mine yet. Why did you have them sent to me?"
There was something in the word yet, or in her tone as she spoke it, which made his heart leap as it had never leaped before.
"If they're not yours, I don't know whom they belong to," he said. And his eye was bright, and his voice almost shook with emotion.
"Are you doing anything?" she asked.
"Nothing on earth."
"Then come and see them."
So they walked off, and he, at any rate, on that occasion was a happy lover. For a few minutes,—perhaps for an hour,—he did allow himself to believe that he was destined to enjoy that rapture of requited affection, in longing for which his very soul had become sick. As she walked back with him to the vicarage her hand rested heavily on his arm, and when she asked him some question about his land, she was able so to modulate her voice as to make him believe that she was learning to regard his interests as her own. He stopped her at the gate leading into the vicarage garden, and once more made to her an assurance of his regard.
"Mary," he said, "if love will beget love, I think that you must love me at last."
"I will love you," she said, pressing his arm still more closely. But even then she could not bring herself to tell him that she did love him.