"Poor child! Allison's death frightened her. And it is as well that she should study both sides of the question," he thought. He did not doubt that eventually she would accept his decision as final.
It was November, and Paul came into lunch one day with an unusual air of depression. His farming venture was proving a grievous failure, as far as money was concerned. On every side he found himself hampered by poverty. The summer had been a wet one, and, in common humanity, he had had to make a considerable reduction in his farm rents; improvements in his cottage property had led to an outlay for which he well knew he could receive no adequate interest, and, as he had tramped over the sodden land this morning, he had been occupied with the anxious consideration how best to make both ends meet.
The longer he lived at Rudham the less he liked it. He was deprived of the society of men of his own way of thinking; and with the rector, who in theory he cordially respected and liked, he found himself nearly always in tacit opposition. Paul's friendship with Kitty was the only connecting link between him and the rector; otherwise they would have drifted hopelessly apart before now. Then, on this particular morning, as he returned home he heard a rumour that May Webster was going to be married to a baronet who had haunted the Court pretty frequently during the last few months; and the hint had filled Paul with unreasoning irritation. Not that it mattered to him whom she married, he assured himself; but the Court had become the one bright spot to him in all the place.
Paul, having promised his friendship, had given it unstintingly, and had been proud to discover that in many of the subjects which interested him the most deeply, he had found May Webster a ready pupil; and when she differed from him she held her own with such merry defiance, that it gave her an added charm in his eyes. And now this mindless, fox-hunting squire was to carry her off, and life at Rudham would sink into one dead level of dulness. Thus it happened that he came home in a captious mood.
"What's the excitement, Sally? A wedding, I suppose, for the bells are making row enough to wake the dead."
"No, it's the Bishop," said Sally, flushing a little. "There is a Confirmation here to-day."
Paul's eyes travelled from Sally's crimsoning face to the white dress she wore.
"I can't see why the Bishop is to be welcomed like a bride, and you are to dress like one of his bridesmaids," he said. "What a singularly inappropriate garment for this dreary November day."
"I am going to be confirmed, Paul."
A long pause followed. It was the crowning vexation of a tiresome morning; but Paul did not wish to say anything that he would afterwards regret.