His mother said that now her poor lad was safe, she could lie in her grave; but she never could have left him behind her. He was laid in the new churchyard, next to the grave of the old squire; and both, all barriers thrown down, awaited the consecrating words that would join their resting-places to those of their kindred and neighbours who rested in peace. Guy and Godfrey stood together at the head of his grave.
Godfrey, through all the time of suspense, had fallen into the way of bringing all his hopes and fears to Constancy. She had hunted him out to take exercise, just as she trotted Rawdie, who had been a devoted nurse to his master, daily round the garden, and sacrificed the peace of the stable-cat’s life, that he might have the refreshment of chasing her up a tree. Now, after the funeral, as Guy lingered to look at the progress made in the church restoration since he had last seen it, Godfrey went back and found her, as he hoped, taking Rawdie for a walk on the lawn.
It did not seem unusual when he began—“I’ve got something to ask you. Don’t you see how this place is like a part of Guy? Can’t you tell me how to make him see that that mere mistake must be undone? It is his. If he would but call it so. It is never out of his thoughts.”
“I think,” said Constancy, looking straight before her, “that it ought to be his. And I think you have done all you can to make up to him. And I think you are quite right to want to make up, and to care about it. And, I am ashamed of having said I did not think so. I was horrid and narrow and small. I always have been, ever since I played ghost for fun. I’m a ‘finished and finite clod, untroubled by a spark.’ That’s all.”
“Oh, Constancy,” cried Godfrey, unheeding, if recognising, this apt quotation. “You know that I’ve been a brute to Guy, and an ass about myself. Thank Heaven, Jeanie threw me over; she’ll be married next month. I’m a mere duffer compared to you; but I love you with all my heart and soul, and if you would—”
“Stop,” she said, with a kind of dignity; “you mustn’t make me.”
She stood still, her face turned away. Once, when she had been asked what she would do with her life, she had answered, “Why, live it, of course.” Would the life now offered her be really her own? The simple yielding of the ideal maiden, to whom the lover comes as a great god, with all the gifts of life in his hand, is not for such as she. She knew very well now, that it was “a big situation.”
“Yes” was not easy to speak; but “No” was impossible.
She turned towards him, pale, and with trembling lips.
“I never thought I would,” she said; “but—but you’ve been so much better than I have—all through—if you can’t be satisfied without me—we’d better try it—some day.”