The truth is, that mother is growing old, and I am away from home a good deal, so that it is almost necessary there should be another person in the house with her besides me.

That's the practical consideration which forces me to think of taking a wife, apart from my wish to take you; and you know there's nobody in the world I care for so much.' She said something about there being far better women than she, and other natural commonplaces; but assured him she was most grateful to him for feeling what he felt, as indeed she sincerely was.

However, Selina would not consent to be the useful third person in his comfortable home--at any rate just then.

He went away, after taking tea with her, without discerning much hope for him in her good-bye.
VI After that evening she saw and heard nothing of him for a great while.
Her fortnightly journeys to the sergeant-major's grave were continued, whenever weather did not hinder them; and Mr.Miller must have known, she thought, of this custom of hers.

But though the churchyard was not nearly so far from his homestead as was her shop at Chalk-Newton, he never appeared in the accidental way that lovers use.
An explanation was forthcoming in the shape of a letter from her mother, who casually mentioned that Mr.Bartholomew Miller had gone away to the other side of Shottsford-Forum to be married to a thriving dairyman's daughter that he knew there.