A thrill ran all through Judith's frame. He felt her tremble beneath his hand, but still she did not lift her head.
"Judith, my own dear, you must marry me! It is necessary for your good name. If that is not enough to move you, it is necessary for mine. I will not have them say that I could trifle with a woman's regard. Though what care we, either you or I, for people's idle talk? Have we not been walking hand-in-hand, each helping and supporting the other to live aright? And has not our companionship been for good to both? Let us marry, Judith! and silence babbling tongues. It will be best so. Look up, my friend, and answer. And yet, Judith, I must own it, I am poor. I have nothing but the stipend of my curacy; and when the poor, my brothers, have had their share, and my yearly bills are paid, there is nothing over. Not a cent. It will explain to you how I never came to think of marriage before."
Then Judith raised her face suffused with blushes, and lighted with a happy eager look which had not been seen there before in twenty years; and under the transfiguring influence of an unexpected joy, she looked for the moment almost beautiful. So, when the fogs and rain of autumn have spent their strength, and the frosts of winter still linger in their coming, there fall halcyon days, when nature, not yet stripped bare of flower and foliage, blooms out again in her Indian summer. The trees are hung with wreaths of gold-bright leaves, or garlanded with crimson, the sod renewed by rains after the summer scorchings, is green with a greenness unseen at other times; the garden is still cheered by marigolds and asters, larkspur and phlox, and the sky and the waters have a sunny blueness, shining but the brighter for the smoky grey which conceals the distance--the distance which harbours winter, tempest, rain, too soon to be let loose.
A tear was quivering on Judith's eyelash. A happy sob gave a tremor to her voice when she tried to speak.
"Dionysius. And do you mean it? Marry--marry me! But it is only your gentlemanly feeling which will not have me talked about. I dare not take you at your word, however--however much--I might----" and her colour deepened, and the drops rained down, and again she hid her face.