"Then," she said, "as a parson, tell me if it would not be wrong to marry a man for whom one did not care, just for the sake of these things--a household and a husband."
"Of course it would," answered Mr. Glynde. "And that is a wrong which is usually punished in this life. But there are cases where it is difficult to say whether there be love or not. Unless you actually despise or hate a man, you may come to care for him."
"And in the meantime the position and the advantages mentioned are worth seizing?"
"So says the world," admitted Mr. Glynde.
She went to him and laid her two arms upon his broad chest, standing behind him as he sat in his arm-chair and looking down affectionately upon his averted face.
"And what says the parson?" she repeated, with a loving tap of her fingers on his breast.
"Nothing," was the reply. "A better parson than I says that what is natural is right."
"Yes, and that means follow the dictates of your own heart?"
"I suppose so," admitted the Hector, taking her two hands in his.
"And the dictates of my heart are all for staying at home and looking after my ancient parents and worrying them. Am I to be sent away? Not yet, old gentleman, not yet."
The Reverend Thomas Glynde laughed, somewhat as if a weight had been lifted from his heart. In his way he was a conscientious man. It was his honest conviction that Dora would do well to marry Arthur, who was a gentleman and essentially harmless. In persuading her to do so covertly, as he had thought well to do, he was honestly performing that which he thought to be his duty towards her. Presently Mrs. Glynde came back, and shortly afterwards Dora left the room. The Rector was not reading the book he held open on his knee, but gazed instead absently at the pattern of the hearthrug.
A change had come in this quiet household. Dora had gone away a child. She had come back a woman, with that consciousness of life which comes somewhere between twenty and thirty years of age--a consciousness which is partly made up of the knowledge that life is, after all, given to each one of us individually to make the best of as well as we may; and no one knows what that best is except ourselves. What is happiness for one is misery for another, and while human beings vary as the clouds of heaven, no life can be lived by set rule.