"My father would like to see you in his study for a few minutes. Will you kindly follow me?"
Joyce obeyed, but her heart beat fast, and she dreaded what the Bishop might have to say to her. Something about Melville; some bad news of the little Middies: her thoughts flew in all directions.
The Bishop had already seated himself in his crimson leather chair, and, when Mr. Law closed the door, she found herself alone with his lordship.
"My dear young lady," he said, in his slow, sonorous tones, "as I know you are, alas! fatherless, will you allow me to stand, for the moment, in the place of a father? A young gentleman, the son of an old friend, has told me to-day that he seeks the honour of paying his addresses to you. He went to Fair Acres last night and received your mother's sanction, tempered, no doubt, with the natural pain of losing you. But she gives her consent, and I venture to endorse it. As chief pastor and father of the diocese, over which I have so recently come to preside, I do earnestly commend to you the son of my old friend, Gilbert Arundel. I propose that you should take a ramble together after service, in the spring twilight, and when we meet at the evening meal, I hope I may find you have made my young friend happy."
The Bishop's speech may sound to us unnecessarily long and formal, but, sixty years ago, the old spirit of chivalrous respect towards maidens, in approaching the subject of marriage, had not then died out. Perhaps, also, in the time of the good Bishop, when the first gentleman in Europe was setting so wretched an example in his behaviour, good and honourable men felt it the more incumbent on them to give the woman the full privileges of her position.
Love was to be sought as a favour granted, not claimed in a careless fashion as a right; while the whole aspect of courtship and marriage was dealt with more seriously than it is in our day.
Barriers are more easily broken down than set up again, and, perhaps, there is too great a tendency now-a-days to treat what is grave as a jest, and to show but little inclination to tread in the paths which our mothers and grandmothers found safe. Thus the Bishop, when he had heard from Gilbert's lips the object of his visit to Wells, thought it his duty to speak to Joyce in the grave manner I have described.
The Bishop rose from his chair, and, laying his hand on Joyce's head, solemnly pronounced a blessing, and, with crimson cheek and bowed head, she left him, to prepare to go to the afternoon service.
Later in the day, the supreme moment in her young life came, when she walked with Gilbert in the fields towards Dinder, turning to the left, where, in a tangled copse, the first budding flowers of the starry celandines were peeping amidst fallen leaves and mosses.
The clustering primrose buds were hardly yet showing themselves amongst their crinkled leaves, and only the upright stems of the alders, and the lowest boughs of the maples and hazel bushes displayed the first emerald green of spring. It was a time and place for the exchange of first young love, and confidences never to be forgotten.