I paused there. I thought she was a little too emphatic. Then I went on thinking about him. He was doctoring and helping the poor, which was very commendable. But there was a certain set of his jaw ... I could not describe it but it suggested that he was no saint. He was a man who went out for what he wanted and would not rest, I was sure, until he got it. He could be ruthless. He had obsessed me. I wished I had never seen him. "We are all the same," David had said. Did that mean that they were all philanderers?

Stop thinking about them, I warned myself.

There was enough to do at the vicarage even if I had decided that I was not going to Mateland for Christmas. Aunt Amy Jane and Uncle Timothy had been invited to the castle and were going.

"It will be so interesting to have a castle Christmas," said Aunt Amy Jane. "I hope all goes well here, James." She meant, of course, that it would be the first Christmas that she would not be at home to superintend the festival. "I shall be here for the children's party," she went on. "And I am allowing the Mothers' Union to have their annual gathering in our hall. That is all taken care of. I think I can leave the rest with you and go off with a clear conscience."

How I wished that I were going! Silly, I told myself. It was your own fault. You were invited.

It seemed a long Christmas. It rained all through Christmas Eve. Janet cooked the goose with one of the women from the village to help her. It was too much to do alone, she said, now that Amelia had gone off to that Crabtree Cottage.

The doctor, his wife and two daughters dined with us on Christmas Day. It seemed quiet after our usual Christmas at Seton Manor. The day seemed endless and then there was Boxing Day to follow.

I went for a ride. I had permission to ride one of the horses in the Seton stables. The groom who saddled it for me said: "It don't seem the same without Miss Jessamy. A lovely young lady, she was."

"7s, Jeffers," I cried. "Don't talk about her as though she is in the past."

I was depressed. I could find no pleasure in the morning although it was a lovely day, quite balmy, with a faint mist in the air. I noticed that there were lots of berries on the holly, which was a sign of a hard winter, so those who were well versed in country lore told us.

I was uneasy about Jessamy. I did not know why I should be. She had everything. Why should I have qualms about her future? I must stop thinking about Mateland Castle and the people in it. My life would be set in a different direction.

I took the horse back to the Seton stables and from there walked to the vicarage. My father was not in.

"He's not come back yet," said Janet. "I expected him an hour ago. I'm waiting to put the food on the table."

"Is he still at the church, do you think?"

"He said he was going over for something ... I don't remember what."

"He's forgotten the time," I said. "I'll go and get him."

I went into the church. I could not enter it now without thinking of myself sprawled on the altar steps and Joel Mateland standing there. I had been a different person up to that time.

I called to my father. There was no answer.

He must be in the vestry, I thought, or in the Lady chapel.

Then I saw him. He was lying very near the spot where I had fallen. I ran to him crying: "Father, what's happened?"

I knelt beside him. At first I thought he was dead. Then I saw his eyelids flicker. I ran out to get help.

He had had a stroke, and he was paralyzed down one side and had lost the power of speech.

With Janet's help I nursed him. A vicar came to take over while my father was ill—so they said; but I knew and so did Janet that he would never preach again.

Tom Gillingham was an earnest young man and a bachelor. Janet reckoned he'd been sent for a purpose.

"Whose purpose?" I asked. "God's or the bishop's?"

"I wouldn't mind reckoning a bit of both," retorted Janet.

Janet, true to the habit of plain speaking, had put the matter clearly before me.

"Your father is not going to get any better," she said. "Pray God he doesn't get worse. And what of you? You've got to think of yourself. Oh yes, you can look at me as if you'd like to tell me to mind my own business. It is my business. I work here, don't I? What's going to happen to you and me when your father dies?"

"He may live for years."

"You know he won't. You can see him getting worse every day. Two months ... three at the most, I reckon. Then you'll have some thinking to do. I doubt the vicar is going to leave you a fortune."

"Your doubts are confirmed, Janet."

"Well then, what's for you? Companion to some old lady? I can't see that for you, Miss Anabel. Governess to some little 'uns ... a bit more likely, but still not right. It's either that or staying on here."

"How could I do that?"

"Plain as a pikestaff, that is, that Tom Gillingham being a bachelor."

I couldn't help smiling. "I wonder what he would say if he knew you were arranging the future for him?"

"He wouldn't mind ... seeing as how I've arranged it. He's sweet on you, Miss Anabel. I wouldn't be surprised if he's got something like that in mind."

"He's a pleasant enough young man," I agreed.

"And you've been brought up in a vicarage ... know all the ins and outs and suchlike."

"It seems very satisfactory but for one thing."

"And what's that?"

"I don't want to marry Tom Gillingham."

"Love can grow, they say."

"It can also diminish, and if it is not there in the first place it can't even do that. No, Janet, we shall have to think of something else."

"It's not that I'm so concerned. I've got my sister Marian I could go to for a spell. We never got on but it would be somewhere to go while I looked round."

"Oh, Janet," I cried, "I should hate to say good-by to you."

Her face twitched but she was always in control of her emotions.

We were silent. It was a bleak future we were looking into.

When Aunt Amy Jane and Uncle Timothy came back they were shocked to hear of my father's illness.

"This puts you in a very awkward position, Anabel," said Aunt Amy Jane.

"You'll have to come to Seton Manor," kind Uncle Timothy told me.

Aunt Amy Jane gave him a cold look. She had never liked him to show affection to me.

"Anabel would never want to live on charity," she said firmly. "She's far too proud."

"Charity!" cried Uncle Timothy. "She's our own niece."

"My niece. Therefore, Timothy, I am the one to know best for her. I dare say there would be something for her to do."

"I shall know what I have to do when the time comes," I said coldly.

There was speculation in Aunt Amy Jane's eyes. I could see she was beginning to work out a plan of action to decide my future.

When she realized that Tom Gillingham was at the vicarage already, and had in fact been appointed to take over when my father died, she saw the solution even as Janet had. Tom Gillingham should marry me—whether he wanted to or not. He should be made to see reason, as everyone must who had a part to play in Aunt Amy Jane's scheme of things.

I knew that Tom would raise no objection. He was interested in me and I only had to respond, I knew, and he would suggest marriage.

I could not do it. It would be like writing The End to my life story, because everything that followed would be so predictable.

If only Jessamy had not gone. If I had never seen Mateland Castle, if I had never realized there were other goals in the world than contriving to exist in a degree of comfort, I might have been willing to accept what seemed like the inevitable. But I had glimpsed a different life. I had met Joel Mateland and even though he was my cousin's husband I still went on thinking of him.

Calmly to settle down in the Seton church as the wife of the vicar was not the life for me.

It was spring when my father died. The moment of decision had come.

Tom Gillingham had made it clear that I must not hurry away, although of course I, as an unmarried woman, could not with propriety go on living at the rectory. When my father had been alive—helpless invalid though he might be—it had been different.

It was the day of the funeral. Tom officiated at the service and we filed into the churchyard following the coffin and its pallbearers. We stood round the grave and desolation swept over me as I thought of my dear kindly father with his ineffectual ways and absent-minded but always self-effacing nature.

It was the end of a way of life.

I felt a hand in mine and, turning, I saw Jessamy. The sight of her warmed me, filled me with some sort of hope. A little of my misery lifted.

The mourners had all gone. Jessamy was sitting on the stool in my bedroom, her arms folded about her knees, looking at me. She had always sat like that. To see her there brought back so many memories of our childhood, when I had dominated her, bullied her sometimes, and led her into mischief. Dear, dear Jessamy who had never ceased to love me for all my wickedness to her.

"What are you going to do, Anabel?" she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"You are not going to marry Tom Gillingham, are you? My mother says you are."

"For once she is wrong. I like Tom, but ..."

"Of course you can't marry him," she said firmly. "Then what?"

"I think the only alternative is to take some post."

"Oh, Anabel. You'd hate that."

"If you have no money you often have to do something which is not congenial. But I'm worried about Janet. You see, though she can go to her sister for a while, she won't want to stay there. She'll have to get another post ... and posts are hard to come by."