"I was glad to think—" She got so far, but the sentence was never finished.
"Glad to think what, dear child?"
Faith glanced up. She did not want to answer. Then she said with the greatest simplicity, "I am glad if I may do something."
"Glad that I should realize my ideal?" Mr. Linden said with a smile, and softly bringing her face round again. "Faith, do you know what a dear little 'minister's wife' you will make?—Mignonette is so suitable for a parsonage!—so well calculated to impress the people with a notion of the extreme grave propriety which reigns there! For is not Mignonette always sweet, demure, and never—by any chance!—high coloured?"
She would not let her face be held up. It went down upon her lap—into her hands, which she pressed close to hide it.
"Oh Endecott!—" she said desperately.—"You'll have to call me something else."
"O Faith!" was his smiling reply,—"I will, just so soon as I can.
Don't you want to come over to the sofa and hear the rest of my story?"
"Your story! Oh yes!"—
And first having a sympathizing interview with the fire, Faith went over to the sofa and sat down; but hid her face no more. Much as he had done before tea, Mr. Linden came and sat down by her,—with the same sort of gentle steadiness of manner, as if some strong thread of feeling had wrapped itself round an equally deep thread of purpose,—his gay talk now as then finding always some contrast in his face. But of this Faith had seen little or nothing—her eyes had not been very free to look. She did notice how silently he stood by her as she put the fire in order, she did notice the look that rested on her as she took her seat, but then he began his story and she could thing of nothing else.
"It was given to me, dear Faith," he said, "to spend my boyhood in an atmosphere more like the glow of that firelight than anything I can compare it to, for its warmth and radiance; where very luxurious worldly circumstances were crowned with the full luxury of earthly love. But it was a love so heaven-directed, so heaven-blessed, that it was but the means of preparing me to go out into the cold alone. That was where I learned to love your diamonds," he added, taking the jewelled hand in his,—"when I used to see them not more busy among things of literature and taste, than in all possible ministrations to the roughest and poorest and humblest of those whom literature describes and taste shrinks from!—But I used to think," he said speaking very low, "that the ring was never so bright, nor so quick moving, as when it was at work for me."