As he came to the door and pulled at the great hanging iron bell handle, the fire balloon reascended in his heart, surrounded with cheers and laughter. III. He kept the servant talking for a moment or two before she went for Miss Carton. The old rector, she told him, was getting less and less able to do much work. Old age had come almost suddenly upon him. He seldom moved from the fireside. He was getting more and more absent-minded. Once lately he had brought his umbrella into the reading-desk. More and more did he leave all things to his children—to Mary Carton and her younger sisters. When the servant had gone Sherman looked round the somewhat gloomy room. In the window hung a canary in a painted cage. Outside was a narrow piece of shaded ground between the window and the rectory wall. The laurel and holly bushes darkened the window a good deal. On a table in the centre of the room were evangelistic books with gilded covers. Round the mirror over the mantlepiece were stuck various parish announcements, thrust between the glass and the gilding. On a small side table was a copper ear-trumpet. How familiar everything seemed to Sherman. Only the room seemed smaller than it did three years before, and close to the table with the ear-trumpet, at one side of the fireplace before the arm-chair, was a new threadbare patch in the carpet. Sherman recalled how in this room he and Mary Carton had sat in winter by the fire, building castles in the air for each other. So deeply meditating was he that she came in and stood unnoticed beside him. “John,” she said at last, “it is a great pleasure to see you so soon again. Are you doing well in London?” “I have left London.” “Are you married, then? You must introduce me to your wife.” “I shall never be married to Miss Leland.” “What?” “She has preferred another—my friend William Howard. I have come here to tell you something, Mary.” He went and stood close to her and took her hand tenderly. “I have always been very fond of you. Often in London, when I was trying to think of another kind of life, I used to see this fireside and you sitting beside it, where we used to sit and talk about the future. Mary—Mary,” he held her hand in both his—“you will be my wife?” “You do not love me, John,” she answered, drawing herself away. “You have come to me because you think it your duty. I have had nothing but duty all my life.” “Listen,” he said. “I was very miserable; I invited Howard to stay with us. One morning I found a note on the smoking-room table to say that Margaret had accepted him, and I have come here to ask you to marry me. I never cared for any one else.” He found himself speaking hurriedly, as though anxious to get the words said and done with. It now seemed to him that he had done ill in this matter of Miss Leland. He had not before thought of it—his mind had always been busy with other things. Mary Carton looked at him wonderingly.