"Mind what you are up to, Rose. Don't play with me too far," he said. And as Rose sat stitching in the housekeeper's room that night, her mind busied itself over Tom's words, and the difficulty of making a decision. It had never entered Rose's pretty head to lay this question of marriage before God. Had she done so she would have been saved from making a mistake, which was to leave its mark upon the whole of her future life. Her heart drew her one way, and her ambition another. Undoubtedly Tom, with his warm heart and openly expressed devotion, was the man she loved the best of the many who had paid her attention; but she might have to wait for him for years, whilst, if Dixon chose to offer it, he could give her a home to-morrow that any girl in the village might envy; but he had never spoken out as Tom had spoken to-night. His wooing had not been so manly and so straight as poor Tom's. Rose had almost made up her mind to tell him on Sunday that she would wait for him, when a voice waked her from her reverie; and the voice was Dixon's. "I suppose you don't happen to know if the carriage will be wanted to take the ladies to the station to-morrow? I heard some talk about their going out, but I haven't had any orders." "I'm not the one to ask! you'll find Mr. Wheeler in the pantry," said Rose, a little sharply. "What's put you out to-night, I wonder?" said Dixon, coming a little further into the room and closing the door behind him. "Had some quarrel with that peppery lad Burney, I expect? Anyway you've been crying about something; and ten to one it's Burney. I saw him coming away from here, and I had the biggest mind to ask him what business he had to be prowling round a place where he was turned off for unsteadiness." "You'd best mind what you say about him!" Rose said, stitching away with feverish rapidity. "He wants me to marry him." "Does he now? Banns put up on Sunday, I suppose?" said Dixon, with a palpable sneer. "No; we should wait," faltered Rose. "I should not have thought you were of the waiting sort. Then it's good-bye to me." "It will be good-bye if I promise; he'll be all or nothing. He's just mad about me." "Then you've not promised yet?" asked Dixon, eagerly. "You've not been silly enough to do that, Rose?" "He won't wait; I'm to tell him on Sunday night. And oh! I'm miserable: I don't know what to do!" And Rose let her work fall in her lap, and burst into sobbing.