A week from today we will be together . . . forever, for ever and ever; living or dead, we’ll be together.’ Arnold Hedley held her thin hands tightly to his breast; his nondescript features glowed with love and happiness. He had waited so long for his superior to die and for Jane to throw off the chains that bound her to Amos, but now everything at last had come about, everything was arranged. Seven days hence she would leave the farm for good and all, and come here to the Vicarage to make it a home. And he so wanted a home, he had never known a home. His parents having died young, he had been brought up in the care of an uncle who had rid himself of him as soon as possible by sending him to boarding school; from there he had gone into the seminary, and from the seminary he had come to this house, this house that had been dominated by John William Wainwright, a man whom he knew in his inner heart was not really of God, for he had been a selfish, vain, self-seeking man. But he must not think harshly of him any more, for he was where God willed him to be these past three months, since which time the bishop had confirmed him in the living and so made his way clear at last to make Jane his wife.
