“I ought to be away in a fortnight’s time.”
That startled her. “A fortnight’s time!” she echoed, in a voice of alarm. “Then it could not be. What would Prior’s Ash say?”
“Maria,” he gravely answered, “some nine months ago, when Sarah Anne Grame was seized with fever, my brother, alarmed for Ethel’s safety, would have married her hastily, so that he might have the right to remove her from danger. Ethel’s answer to him was, ‘What would Prior’s Ash say?’—as you have now answered me. Thomas bowed to it: he suffered the world’s notions to reign paramount—and he lost Ethel. What value do you suppose he sets now upon the opinions of Prior’s Ash? The cases may not be precisely parallel, but they are sufficiently so to decide me. If I go away from home, I take you: if I may not take you, I do not go. And now, my darling, I will say farewell to you for the present.”
She was surprised. She thought he had come to stay for some hours.
“Yes,” he replied; “but affairs have changed since I entered. Until they shall be more definitively settled, Mr. Hastings will not care that I remain his guest.”
He bent to kiss her. Not in the stolen manner he had been accustomed to, but—quietly, gravely, turning her shy face to his, as if it were his legal province so to do. “A little while, young lady,” he saucily whispered, “and you will be giving me kiss for kiss.”
Mr. Hastings was in the porch still, holding a colloquy with ill-doing and troublesome Mrs. Bond. George held out his hand as he passed.
“You have not rested yourself,” said the Rector.
“I shall get back as far as the bank and rest there,” replied George. “I presume, sir, that you intend to see my brother?”
“And also Miss Godolphin,” curtly said the Rector.