"None, I am certain, and mark me, Rosina. This is a mere fancy of my own. You must not mention what I have said to her."
"Certainly not."
The good man walked to the window, and looked abstractedly across his small garden plot for a few minutes, then returned as suddenly to his seat.
"Rosina," he said, looking with a half smile at his gentle partner, "these suspicions with regard to Dorothy, brought back to my memory a strange story. You will not be jealous, my dear wife, if I relate to you a tale of boyish love and its disappointments. It happened many years before I saw or had learned to love you."
"Henry, that is a sad cut to my vanity," returned his wife, laughing, "I always had flattered myself that I was your first love. However, I promise to give you a fair hearing, and will not be affronted, until I know the end of your story. But what connection it can have with Dorothy Chance puzzles me."
"There may be none. It is only mere conjecture, as I said before. Of the probabilities I will leave you to judge.
"My father was curate of the neighbouring sea-port town during the few years of his married life. He conducted the morning and evening service, in that large beautiful old church that stands on the edge of the cliff, and had to walk over to Hadstone in the afternoon, through all weathers, to preach in our little church here. It was hard work, and very poor pay, his salary amounting, like mine, to eighty pounds a-year."
"How did you contrive to live, Henry?"
"Not very luxuriously. Sprats and herrings were plentiful, however; my mother was an excellent manager, the neighbours were kind, and I was an only child; my parents worthy, pious people, and I a happy, hopeful boy.
"We lived in a little cottage near the sea, just before you turn into the main street. The first house in that street, and the one nearest to us, was occupied by a Mrs. Knight.