Jess knew so little of the habits of lovers that his lack of eagerness or affection in greeting her passed unnoticed.
He took out his watch and glanced at it.
“There is a long walk before us, and I think we had better start at once,” he said, abruptly; “we can return in at least a couple of hours, and during that time we shall not be missed.
“You are sure you are willing?” he asked again, as they reached the garden gate.
Jess looked up shyly into the grand face. She would have gone to the other end of the world with him. But she answered only a simple “Yes.”
They walked on through the early morning together, side by side, and to the end of her life, ay! and in the years when she understood it better, she remembered her companion’s white face, grave even to sternness, and his preoccupied air.
He did not notice the beautiful rosy dawn that flushed the eastern sky directly before them, nor the birds, as they awoke from their nests and went soaring away toward the blue dome that bent above them; nor did he see the flowers lift their sleepy heads and shake the dew from their drowsy eyelids.
Jess cast furtive glances at her companion, her heart beating and her every sense tingling deliciously at the thought that she was on her way to be married to the handsome gentleman by her side, from whom she was to be parted nevermore.
How different were the thoughts of her companion as they neared their destination, and the moments advanced in which his bonds were to be sealed for life—they seemed irksome beyond the possibility of bearing, and nothing but his strict idea that he was doing his duty restrained him from asking little Jess to release him from the marriage which had been forced upon him by his uncle’s odious will.
The people of the village were all astir as they reached it; and when they made their way to the rectory which lay beyond, they found the good man who presided over it out in the little garden which surrounded the parsonage.