“And what has made you change your resolution, Mr. Asquith?” said Mary, very demurely, without raising her eyes. “Change? I have not changed at all,” he said. And then he stopped short, with a look of misery and confusion. “What have I done?” he said. “What have I done? though I did not intend it--it has been too much for me--I have betrayed myself after all!” And for a moment he turned his back upon her, as if he would have fled. “Don’t run away,” said Mary, softly touching his arm with her hand. “Why shouldn’t you tell me--whatever you wanted to tell me?--if you did really want to tell me anything,” she said. “Oh, Mary!” cried the curate, and paused; for the words came so fast upon him that he did not know which to say first. “Yes?” said Mary softly, giving him one little sidelong glance: and then her face crimsoned over, and she drooped her head, but still with a modest note of interrogation in the turn of her fine little pink ear. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. PARADISE LANE. “We must tell them all directly,” Mary said. “Tell them!” cried the curate. For one brief half hour he had forgotten everything, and given himself up to that delight which once in his life every man has a right to--or so at least we think when we are young--the delight of loving and being loved. The bare country road had turned into Paradise, into Elysium for both of them; it was more beautiful and sweet than anything out of heaven. The green boughs waved softly between them and the celestial blue above, making a chequer-work of sun and shade that flickered and danced, and made the very dust under their feet happy; and as for the flowers in the hedgerows, no roses were ever so sweet. They walked upon enchanted ground, and all nature sang soft hymns of praise over their happiness, which was sweeter than the roses, or anything that earth, our homely foster-mother, can give. She was wistfully glad of it, that brown and faithful nurse, that mother earth, who could strew flowers at their feet, but could not bestow such blessedness. But when Mary said those simple words, the world, which had nothing to do with that hour, suddenly rolled its great shadow round, coming between the curate and the sunshine of heaven. “Tell them!” he said, and his countenance fell. Oh yes, he knew very well they must be told: but he had been able to forget it for that moment of delight. “Yes, tell them. You meant that?” said Mary, looking up somewhat alarmed in his face. “Oh yes, I meant that,” he said with a groan--“at least, I didn’t mean anything. I never meant to tell _you_, let alone them.” “So you said,” Mary remarked, in her demure way; “you told me you had made up your mind not to tell me----” and she laughed in the pleasure of her maiden power.