"That is well," said Luke. "We are all liable thus to stray, and well for us when we find a sure guide, and follow him." For a young man he was gaunt. He was dressed in scrupulously correct clerical costume, a cassock and knee-breeches, white bands, and a three-cornered hat. Urith spoke about the fire on the moor, the bewilderment caused by the smoke, and then of the storm during the night. He stood listening to her and looking at her; it seemed to him that he had not before properly appreciated her beauty. He had wondered at her strange temper--now frank, then sullen and reserved; he did not know the reason why this was now for the first time revealed to him--it was because in the night a change had taken place in the girl, for the first time she had felt the breath of that spirit of love which like magic wakes up the sleeping charms of soul and face, gives them expression and significance. Not, however, now for the first time did the thought cross his mind that, of all women in the world, she was the only one he could and did love. He had long loved her, loved her deeply, but hopelessly, and had fought many a hard battle with himself to conquer a passion which his judgment told him must be subdued. He knew the girl--wild, sullen, undisciplined--the last to mould into the proper mate for a village pastor. Moreover, what was he but a poor curate, without interest with patrons, without means of his own, likely, as far as he could judge, to live and die, a curate. He knew not only that Urith was not calculated to make a pastor's wife, but he knew also that hers was not a character that could consort with his. He was studious, meek, yet firm in his principles; she was hardly tame, of ungovernable temper, and a creature of impulse. No, they could not be happy together even were circumstances to allow of his marrying. He had said all this to himself a thousand times, yet he could not conquer his passion. He held it in control, and Urith, least of all, had a notion of its existence. She exercised on him that magic that is exercised on one character by another the reverse at every point. The calm, self-ruled, in-wrapped nature of Luke looked out at the turbulence or the moroseness of the wild girl with admiration mingled with fear. It exercised over him an inexplicable but overpowering spell. He knew she was not for him, and yet that she should ever belong to another was a thought that he could not bear to entertain. He walked at her side to the house listening to her, but hardly knowing what she said. The glamour of her presence was on him, and he walked as in a cloud of light, that dazzled his eyes and confused his mind.