“Alas! he is not lucky at all,” said Hilary, her eyes filling with tears. “They say he is over-young, and will not allow us to meet.”
“For that, dear madam, there is a sure remedy. Have patience; we grow old only too fast in these harassing days.”
And after that the good-natured suitor, with a pitying remembrance of Gabriel Harford’s unhappy face, tried to do him a good turn with the Bishop, by showing how utterly hopeless it was to woo a maid whose heart had been given to another man since nursery days, and how extremely probable it was that the lady’s health would suffer if she were too severely tried.
The words made no apparent impression on the Bishop, but they returned to him uncomfortably one Sunday morning in the cathedral, when his eye happened to rest for a minute on Hilary’s face. It suddenly struck him that she had grown curiously pale and thin during the last fortnight, and glancing across at the place usually occupied by Gabriel Harford, he noticed that in him, also, there was a change; the lad looked much older, his sunburnt face had lost its boyish carelessness, his eyes seemed larger and more sad. Yet there was a curious vigour about him in spite of his trouble, and as he joined in the metrical Psalm something in his expression appealed to the Bishop. The cathedral rang with the sweet voices of the choristers as they sang to the tune of the old 137th, Sternhold and Hopkins’ quaint version of King David’s words:
“In trouble and adversity,
The Lord God hear thee still;
The majesty of Jacob’s God
Defend thee from all ill.
And send thee from His holy place
His help in every need;