CHAPTER III.
ACCEPTED.
Mr.Fenton lingered another week at Lidford, with imminent peril to the safe conduct of affairs at his offices in Great St.Helens.He could not tear himself away just yet.

He felt that he must have some more definite understanding of his position before he went back to London; and in the meantime he pondered with a dangerous delight upon that sunny vision of a suburban villa to which Marian should welcome him when his day's work was done.
He went every day to the cottage, and he bore himself in no manner like a rejected lover.

He was indeed very hopeful as to the issue of his wooing.
He knew that Marian Nowell's heart was free, that there was no rival image to be displaced before his own could reign there, and he thought that it must go hard with him if he did not win her love.
So Marian saw him every day, and had to listen to the Captain's praises of him pretty frequently during his absence.

And Captain Sedgewick's talk about Gilbert Fenton generally closed with a regretful sigh, the meaning of which had grown very clear to Marian.
She thought about her uncle's words and looks and sighs a good deal in the quiet of her own room.

What was there she would not do for the love of that dearest and noblest of men?
Marry a man she disliked?
No, that was a sin from which the girl's pure mind would have recoiled instinctively.