As they paused on the top of a rising ground looking westward he looked at her with sudden and kindly decision.
"Miss Elsmere, are you sure your mother would like to see me? It was very good of you to request that I should accompany you to-night—but—are you sure?"
Mary coloured deeply and hesitated a moment.
"Don't you think I'd better turn back?" he asked her, gently. "Your path is clear before you." He pointed to it winding through the fern. "And you know, I hope, that anything I could do for you and your mother during your stay here I should be only too enchanted to do. The one thing I shrink from doing is to interfere in any way with her rest here. And I am afraid just now I might be a disturbing element."
"No, no! please come!" said Mary, earnestly. Then as she turned her head away, she added: "Of course—there is nothing new—to her—"
"Except that my fight is waged from inside the Church—and your father's from outside. But that might make all the difference to her."
"I don't think so. It is"—she faltered—"the change itself. It is all so terrible to her."
"Any break with the old things? But doesn't it ever present itself to her—force itself upon her—as the upwelling of a new life?" he asked, sadly.
"Ah!—if it didn't in my father's case—"
The girl's eyes filled with tears.