She might have begun to guess his meaning; but apart from that, she had such dread of contact with anything painful, harsh, or even earnest, that his preliminaries alone were enough to distress her.

"Yes, what is it ?" she said.
"I am an old man," said Melbury, "whom, somewhat late in life, God thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter.

Her mother was a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us when the child was young, and the child became precious as the apple of my eye to me, for she was all I had left to love.

For her sake entirely I married as second wife a homespun woman who had been kind as a mother to her.

In due time the question of her education came on, and I said, 'I will educate the maid well, if I live upon bread to do it.' Of her possible marriage I could not bear to think, for it seemed like a death that she should cleave to another man, and grow to think his house her home rather than mine.