Yes; I give you my promise. If I am ever in trouble, I will let you know it. God bless you--you have been very kind to me--good-by!"A tear dropped on my face as she kissed me. The door closed between us. The dark street received me.
It was raining heavily. I looked up at her window, through the drifting shower. The curtains were parted: she was standing in the gap, dimly lit by the lamp on the table behind her, waiting for our last look at each other. Slowly lifting her hand, she waved her farewell at the window, with the unsought native grace which had charmed me on the night when we first met. The curtain fell again--she disappeared--nothing was before me, nothing was round me, but the darkness and the night.
V.
IN two years from that time, I had redeemed the promise given to my mother on her deathbed. I had entered the Church.
My father's interest made my first step in my new profession an easy one. After serving my preliminary apprenticeship as a curate, I was appointed, before I was thirty years of age, to a living in the West of England.