Dorothy then understood her position—it was wonderful with what clearness, but solitary necessity is a hot sun to ripen. What was she to do? To what quarter—could she to any quarter look for help? Naturally she thought first of Mr. Wingfold. But she did not feel at all sure that he would consent to receive a communication upon any other understanding than that he was to act in the matter as he might see best; and would it be right to acquaint him with the secret of another when possibly he might feel bound to reveal it? Besides, if he kept it hid, the result might be blame to him; and blame, she reasoned, although a small matter in regard to one like herself, might in respect of a man in the curate's position involve serious consequences. While she thus reflected, it came into her mind with what enthusiasm she had heard him speak of Mr. Polwarth, attributing to him the beginnings of all enlightenment he had himself ever received. Without this testimony, she would not have once thought of him. Indeed she had been more than a little doubtful of him, for she had never felt attracted to him, and from her knowledge of the unhealthy religious atmosphere of the chapel, had got unreasonably suspicious of cant. She had not had experience enough to distinguish with any certainty the speech that comes from the head and that which comes out of the fullness of the heart. A man must talk out of that which is in him; his well must give out the water of its own spring; but what seems a well maybe only a cistern, and the water by no means living water. What she had once or twice heard him say, had rather repelled than drawn her; but Dorothy had faith, and Mr. Wingfold had spoken. Might she tell him? Ought she not to seek his help? Would he keep the secret? Could he help if he would? Was he indeed as wise as they said?
In the meantime, little as she thought it, Polwarth had been awaiting a communication from her; but when he found that the question whose presence was so visible in her whole bearing, neither died nor bore fruit, he began to think whether he might not help her to speak. The next time, therefore, that he opened the gate to her, he held in his hand a little bud he had just broken from a monthly rose. It was a hard little button, upon which the green leaves of its calyx clung as if choking it.
"What is the matter with this bud, do you think, Miss Drake?" he asked.
"That you have plucked it," she answered sharply, throwing a suspicious glance in his face.
"No; that can not be it," he answered with a quiet smile of intelligence. "It has been just as you see it for the last three days. I only plucked it the moment I saw you coming."
"Then the frost has caught it."
"The frost has caught it," he answered; "but I am not quite sure whether the cause of its death was not rather its own life than the frost."
"I don't see what you mean by that, Mr. Polwarth," said Dorothy, doubtfully, and with a feeling of discomfort.
"I admit it sounds paradoxical," returned the little man. "What I mean is, that the struggle of the life in it to unfold itself, rather than any thing else, was the cause of its death."
"But the frost was the cause of its not being able to unfold itself," said Dorothy.