“You seemed to understand everything that night,” he went on; “or if you did not, your thoughts were very generous to me.”
In my sorrow for him I did not notice that we were moving on again, this time in the direction of Windyghoul.
“She was only a gypsy girl,” he said, abruptly, and I nodded. “But I hoped,” he continued, “that she would be my wife.”
“I understood that,” I said.
“There was nothing monstrous to you,” he asked, looking me in the face, “in a minister’s marrying a gypsy?”
I own that if I had loved a girl, however far below or above me in degree, I would have married her had she been willing to take me. But to Gavin I only 242 answered, “These are matters a man must decide for himself.”
“I had decided for myself,” he said, emphatically.
“Yet,” I said, wanting him to talk to me of Margaret, “in such a case one might have others to consider besides himself.”
“A man’s marriage,” he answered, “is his own affair, I would have brooked no interference from my congregation.”
I thought, “There is some obstinacy left in him still;” but aloud I said, “It was of your mother I was thinking.”