"But the cold is not to blame," owned the girl to herself. "When one has a friend--such a friend as Mr. Foster--one does not like him to stay away from the house for a week; and one cannot bear to hear that he is always at the rectory when Miss White is there! And yet it ought not to matter to me!" It mattered so much that the tears in Nelly's brown eyes began to run down her cheeks. At that very moment the drawing-room door was thrown open, and the page announced Mr. Foster. The curate advanced a few paces, and stopped in sudden dismay. There was something so pathetic in Nelly's pale, tearful face, that he was stricken speechless for a moment. And then he recovered himself, and began to make anxious inquiries which she scarcely knew how to answer. "Nothing has happened, Mr. Foster," she sobbed. "I am only crying because I am in low spirits." "Shall I go away now, and call to-morrow?" asked the bewildered young man in his embarrassment. "No," said Nelly, suddenly looking up through her tears; "I shall be a great deal worse if you leave me to myself!" Her face told him more than her words. In a moment the truth flashed upon him, and covered him with confusion. A vainer man, or one less occupied in earnest work, would have seen it far sooner. Morgan Foster took a chair by her side, and felt his heart throbbing as it had seldom throbbed before. There was but one thing to be done, and he was going to do it. There is no need to tell what he said. Perhaps it was not a very impassioned declaration; but it made a happy woman of Nelly. And only a few minutes later Mr. Channell and his wife returned from a wintry walk, and found the two young people together. There were no concealments; Morgan was too honourable, and Nelly too simple-hearted, to make a secret of what had taken place. It was all talked over quietly, but with a good deal of restrained feeling; and, then, having declined an invitation to dinner, the curate went his way. He scarcely knew himself in the character of an engaged man. He had been working so hard all his life that marriage had been a very distant prospect to him. While there were the dear old parents to be helped, how could he think of taking a wife? And now, here was a rich girl willing to marry him; and here was her father actually consenting to the match with evident satisfaction! But Nelly was something better than an heiress; she was a very sweet woman; such a woman as any man would have been proud to win. So Morgan Foster, as he walked back to his lodging over the frozen snow, began to wonder at the good gifts that Heaven had showered upon him. It was a strange fact that he was more inclined to wonder than to rejoice. CHAPTER XIII. WHAT A LITTLE POEM REVEALED.