"You would do so if you knew what your duty to your mother was."
"I have other duties besides those to you, mamma; when one has promised to marry a man, one is surely bound to consider him a little. If I have the chance of meeting him, I shall certainly take it."
"I shall take very good care that you have no such chances, Beatrice."
"Very well, mamma; you will, of course, do as you think best."
It was in consequence of these and sundry subsequent stormy conversations that Mr. Herbert Pryme suddenly discovered that he had a very high regard and affection for Mr. Albert Gisburne, the vicar of Tripton, the same to whom once Vera's relations had wished to unite her.
The connection between Mr. Gisburne and Herbert Pryme was a slender one; he had been at college with an elder brother of his, who had died in his (Herbert's) childhood. He did not indeed very clearly recollect what this elder brother had been like; but having suddenly called to mind that, during the course of his short visit to Shadonake, he had discovered the fact of the college friendship, of which, indeed, Mr. Gisburne had informed him, he now was unaccountably inflamed by a desire to cultivate the acquaintance of the valued companion of his deceased brother's youth.
He opened negotiations by the gift of a barrel of oysters, sent down from Wilton's, with an appropriate and graceful accompanying note. Mr. Gisburne was surprised, but not naturally otherwise than pleased by the attention. Next came a box of cigars, which again were shortly followed by two brace of pheasants purporting to be of Herbert's own shooting, but which, as a matter of fact, he had purchased in Vigo Street.
This munificent succession of gifts reaped at length the harvest for which they had been sown. In his third letter of grateful acknowledgment for his young friend's kind remembrance of him, Mr. Gisburne, with some diffidence, for Tripton Rectory was neither lively nor remarkably commodious, suggested how great the pleasure would be were his friend to run down to him for a couple of days or so; he had nothing, in truth, to offer him but a bachelor's quarters and a hearty welcome; there was next to no attraction beyond a pretty rural village and a choral daily service; but still, if he cared to come, Mr. Gisburne need not say how delighted he would be, etc., etc.
It is not too much to say that the friend jumped at it. On the shortest possible notice he arrived, bag and baggage, professing himself charmed with the bachelor's quarters; and, burning with an insatiable desire to behold the rurality of the village, to listen to the beauty and the harmony of the daily choral performances, he took up his abode in the clergyman's establishment; and the very next morning he sent a rural villager over to Shadonake with a half-crown for himself and a note to be given to Miss Miller the very first time she walked or rode out alone. This note was duly delivered, and that same afternoon Beatrice met her lover by appointment in an empty lime-kiln up among the chalk hills. This romantic rendezvous was, however, discontinued shortly, owing to the fact of Mrs. Miller having become suspicious of her daughter's frequent and solitary walks, and insisting on sending out Geraldine and her governess with her.
A few mornings later a golden chance presented itself. Mr. and Mrs. Miller went away for the night to dine and sleep at a distant country house. Beatrice had not been invited to go with them. She did not venture to ask her lover to the house he had been forbidden to enter, but she ordered the carriage for herself, caught the early train to Tripton, met Herbert, by appointment, outside the station, and stood talking to him in the fog by the wayside, where Vera suddenly burst upon their astonished gaze.