He was more in love than ever; but in his present circumstances marriage was out of the question. How was he to bring home a wife to the old home, entangled as he was by a load of debt and difficulties? Garth was perfectly honest in his intentions. He had made up his mind that Queenie Marriott was the woman he loved; but he had a man's horror of a long engagement. "What's the good of telling a girl you love her if you can't see your way clear to make her your wife?" he always said; and he acted on this opinion so thoroughly that his quiet withdrawal of attentions filled the girl's heart with dismay. "Would he be so cold and distant with me if he really loved me?" Queenie asked herself. "He never comes to see me now, and if I go up to Church-Stile House he is always so busy, and seems as if he fears to be alone with me. Does he think that I want him to pay me attentions if he has ceased to care for me in the way he did?" asked the girl, her breast heaving at the thought; and she mourned for the loss of her friend, and in her secret soul refused to be comforted. But she knew nothing of the conflict that went on under that assumed coldness of manner that wounded her so greatly. Garth found his life anything but easy just now; to be sure, ruin no longer stared him in the face, but his debt was a secret torment to him, and fretted his proud nature with a sense of positive injury. He would fain have drawn out as little as possible of the sum placed for his benefit, but his needs were pressing. Scarcity of orders, the rise in the men's wages, the heavily-freighted accounts of the cottages he had so lavishly provided for his workmen, had obliged him to expend already seven or eight hundred pounds of the money. The quarry was now in good working order again; and in a few months the young master of Warstdale trusted that he would be enabled to repay the first instalment of the debt; and then, and not till then, would he open his lips to speak any words of love. Garth was capable of keeping any resolution that he had formed. It was no fear of betraying himself that made him avoid Queenie; but the girl's presence was so sweet to him, and the longing to tell what was in his heart was so great, that the pain of such silence was unendurable to him. And so he quietly withdrew himself, and went on with his daily work as though no such thoughts were his; and Queenie meekly accepted her banishment and bore Langley's reproaches on her unsociability as patiently as she could, until Langley discovered how matters were, and held her peace ever afterward like a wise woman, and petted and made much of the girl when she came down to the cottage.