"What are you afraid of?" asked Elsie.

"Anything, everything—a ghost from the
grave, I think. When I was a boy at school
Elsie, I used to think, as the holidays drew
near, that I never should live till the day came.
I think I feel the same now, about our wedding-
day."

"Let it be just as you wish, Philip," said
Elsie, with a little sigh. "I shall be very, very
thankful. You do not know the rest and
comfort it will be to me to begin my new life, with
you to care for me, and with duties to do. I
have been so very unhappy for such a long
time."

The tears filled her eyes, and rolled down
her cheeks; but he caught her in his arms and
kissed them away; he called God to witness
that not a cloud should come across her sky
when she was his wife; he vowed that when
her life was in his keeping, it should be one long
summer's day of brightness. His vehemence
seemed to scare her; she drew back, shrinking,
from the clasp of his arms.

"Do not talk so," she said; "you frighten
me. Who can tell what Heaven has in store for
us? I have learnt not to build too much on
happiness, and, above all, not to think much
about the future; it is not in our own power."

"It is more in our own power than you
think," Philip Denbigh answered. "I believe
that to wish a thing intensely, perseveringly, to
the exclusion of every other thought and feeling,
brings it to pass oftener than people suppose."

He checked himself, for a pang of self-reproach
struck on his heart as he asked himself, had not
his love for Elsie taken the form of just such a
longing, and had not his passionate wish been
fulfilled at a fearful cost? He spoke smilingly,
and in a lighter tone, as he said:

"We see when a man's fate is too much for
him; but who can tell how many times a man's
intense will conquers his fate?"

Perhaps it was a relief to both of them,
that their tête-à-tête was interrupted by the
entrance of a kind little old maiden lady who
lived some miles off, and who had lately come,
at Mrs. Clavering's request, to remain with her
till her marriage. Elsie was never so happy as
when her lover was with her, but she was
sometimes scared by the vehement expressions
which she could not echo and could hardly
understand. In the presence of others he was
wholly undemonstrative, and his conversation
—which was of books, and all the literary and
scientific subjects of the day—far above the
usual Sedgbrook level, was delightful to Elsie;
who, though not clever herself, was very
appreciative, and of the sweet teachable nature which
mankind most values in a wife or sister. To
Philip Denbigh her very presence brought an
indescribable charm and delight. She suited
him exactly, to use the common-place phrase;
in grander language, she satisfied every craving
of his nature. Her sweet beauty, her gentle
yielding temper, her soft repose, so unlike his
own vehement concentrated nature, were all
delightful to him. The old uncle who had left
him his practice, together with a house, a
garden, and a field, all known by the name of The
Abbot's Portion, had also given him an education
rather beyond the requirements of a village
surgeon. His skilful treatment of a very
difficult surgical case, had since brought him
under the notice of some high medical
authorities in London and Paris, he had been
repeatedly urged not to waste his talents in that
remote country region, but to avail himself of
more than one opening which had come in his
way. Hitherto he had invariably refused; some
thought from a feeling of loyalty towards old
Sedgbrook, where a Denbigh had been the
village doctor ever since the year one; others
thought (and with more reason) because he
could not endure to leave the place where Elsie
Clavering was bearing her long trial.

When he wished her good night on this
evening, he said, "I shall have more spirit
now, Elsie, and more ambition. Shall you
break your heart if I carry you off from old
Sedgbrook some day?"

"No, I shall carry my home with me," she
answered, looking up in his face with her pretty
smile.

"I should like to give you a sunnier home
than dingy old Abbot's Portion," he said. "I
should like my Elsie to take her place some day
among the ladies of the land."

With a fond good night he left her, and
was soon in the churchyard, which led on the
other side, through a turnstile and a narrow
lane, into the main street of the village.
Following this for some way, he then turned up
another narrow lane, and in a few minutes
found himself at the little white gate which
led, through a narrow strip of garden, to his
house. It was a quaint building of a dull red
colour, with heavy old-fashioned windows in
settings of grey stone. It had once been
attached to a religious house, as farm or guest-
house, and hence its peculiar name. The little
entrance-hall and a dingy square parlour looked
towards the road: an ugly little excrescence of
modern growth had a separate entrance to itself,
and was the surgery. Two large low sitting-rooms
at the back looked, across a small garden, to the
field which completed the domain. That field was
dreaded by the youth of Sedgbrook, for in one
corner was a black-looking pool of water which,
tradition said, was of unfathomable depth;
it was surrounded on three sides by high banks,
and overhung by an elm-tree, on which, according
to the same tradition, the last abbot had
been hanged, his body being afterwards flung
into the pool, which had borne his name from
that time. Of course his ghost "walked," and
no threats or promises would have induced a
Sedgbrook lad to venture near the haunted
spot after dark. To this superstition Mr.
Denbigh was indebted for a great deal of
tranquillity, as the place, being a famous one for
blackberries in autumn and for skating in
winter, and at all times delightfully perilous to
life and limb, might otherwise have been more