"Treasures both; brother and sister."
"One other question--where do they come from?"
"London. I don't know what part."
A mist floated before Joshua's eyes, and he remained like one in a dream during the afternoon--wondering, hoping, fearing. When they were near to the village the following afternoon, Joshua said,--
"It may be that you have rendered me one of the greatest services that a man can possibly render another. If it be as I scarcely dare to hope, we shall know each other for long after this. Complete the service by doing one little thing more. Drive past the house where your friends live and point it out to me, so that I may descend and walk to it alone when we are at the end of your journey."
Ramsay nodded. It was about five o'clock when the mail-cart rattled into the village. The contractor for the mails always made a great clatter when he came in, as if he had been driving for his life--a fiction which, although no one believed in, he thought it desirable to keep up. "It looks government-like," he said.
Solomon Fewster is in the garden at the rear of the house, pleading his suit to Ellen for the twentieth time. She stands silent until he has finished a rhapsody, in which love and money are strangely commingled.
"Think of the time I have waited, Ellen," he says; "think of the constancy of my affection, and of the position I can offer you. I am making money fast, and only wait for you to say yes, to buy a house for us, which in three years will be worth three times what they ask for it. What is the use of your wasting your life in this out-of-the-way village when all the attractions of a city-life are open to you? Come now, give me your hand, and reward the man who has been your constant friend and lover, and who can make you rich."
But Ellen is insensible to the splendor of the offer; indeed, she is weary of it and him, and she tells him so spiritedly, and yet cannot repulse him. At length she says,--
"Mr. Fewster, there must be an end to this. I shall never, never marry again; and even if I did," she adds, to put a stop to what has become persecution, "I should not choose you;" and leaves him with this arrow in his heart.