"Nor I,—but that proves nothing. This won't do. It is two o'clock. We must get away. It will be growing dark in a little while more. The days are just at the shortest."
"I think the storm isn't quite so bad as it was," said Diana.
They stood still and listened. It beat and blew, and the snow came thick; still the exceeding fury of the blast seemed to be lessened.
"We'll give it a quarter of an hour more," said the minister.
"Diana—we have had preaching, but we have had no praying."
She assented submissively, to his look as well as his words, and they knelt down together in the chancel. Mr. Masters prayed, not very long, but a prayer full of the sweetness and the confidence and the strength, of a child of God who is at home in his Father's presence; full of tenderness and sympathy for her. Diana's mind went through a series of experiences in the course of that short prayer. The sweetness and the confidence of it touched her first with the sense of contrast, and wrung tears from her that were bitter; then the speaker got beyond her depth, into regions of feeling where she could not follow him nor quite understand, but that, she knew, was only because he was at home where she was so much a stranger; and her thoughts made a leap to the admiration of him, and then to the useless consideration, how happy she might have been with this man had not Evan come between. Why had he come, just to win her and prove himself unworthy of her? But it was done, and not to be undone. Evan had her heart, worthy or unworthy; she could not take it back; there was nothing left for her but to be a cold shadow walking beside this good man who was so full of all gentle and noble affections. Well, she was glad, since he wanted her, that she might lead her colourless existence by his side. That was the last feeling with which she rose from her knees.
CHAPTER XX.
SETTLED.
It was a very wild storm yet through which Mr. Masters drove Diana home. Still the wind blew hard, and the snow came driving and beating down upon their shoulders and faces in thick white masses; and the drifts had piled up in some places very high. More than once the sleigh, Prince and all, was near being lodged in a snow-bank, from which the getting free would have been a work of time; Mr. Masters had to get out and do some rather complicated engineering; and withal, through the thick and heavy snowfall it was difficult to see what they were coming to. Patience and coolness and good driving got the better of dangers however, and slowly the way was put behind them. They met nobody.
"Mr. Masters," said Diana suddenly, "you will have to stay at our house to-night. You can never get back."
"I don't believe Mrs. Starling will let me go," said the minister.