He drew nearer, and the direction of the rain caused him so to slant his umbrella that from her height above the ground his head was invisible, as she was also to him. He passed in due time directly beneath her, and in looking down upon the exterior of his umbrella her feminine eyes perceived it to be of superior silk—less common at that date than since—and of elegant make. He reached the entrance to the building, and Fancy suddenly lost sight of him. Instead of pursuing the roadway as Dick had done he had turned sharply round into her own porch.
She jumped to the floor, hastily flung off her shawl and bonnet, smoothed and patted her hair till the curls hung in passable condition, and listened. No knock. Nearly a minute passed, and still there was no knock. Then there arose a soft series of raps, no louder than the tapping of a distant woodpecker, and barely distinct enough to reach her ears. She composed herself and flung open the door.
In the porch stood Mr. Maybold.
There was a warm flush upon his face, and a bright flash in his eyes, which made him look handsomer than she had ever seen him before.
“Good-evening, Miss Day.”
“Good-evening, Mr. Maybold,” she said, in a strange state of mind. She had noticed, beyond the ardent hue of his face, that his voice had a singular tremor in it, and that his hand shook like an aspen leaf when he laid his umbrella in the corner of the porch. Without another word being spoken by either, he came into the schoolroom, shut the door, and moved close to her. Once inside, the expression of his face was no more discernible, by reason of the increasing dusk of evening.
“I want to speak to you,” he then said; “seriously—on a perhaps unexpected subject, but one which is all the world to me—I don’t know what it may be to you, Miss Day.”
No reply.
“Fancy, I have come to ask you if you will be my wife?”
As a person who has been idly amusing himself with rolling a snowball might start at finding he had set in motion an avalanche, so did Fancy start at these words from the vicar. And in the dead silence which followed them, the breathings of the man and of the woman could be distinctly and separately heard; and there was this difference between them—his respirations gradually grew quieter and less rapid after the enunciation, hers, from having been low and regular, increased in quickness and force, till she almost panted.