Charity spent all of the morning telling herself that Mr. Harding would not call.

She assembled a great number of reasons why he would stay away and tortured herself with each imagined excuse in turn. She told herself that he had merely been swept up at that moment, and that once he had returned home that night, he had thought better of it.

At other moments she stood in front of the looking glass and was sure that there was nothing that a gentleman, like Mr. Harding, could possibly see in a face such as hers. She told herself that he had meant it when he said that he wished to be her friend, and that she had made a foolish assumption in believing that he had meant anything more.

I assure you that my intentions are honorable.

Again and again, she parsed these words, searching for any possibility of misinterpretation. She tried to think of a way in which their meaning had signified only a cordial wish to further their acquaintance as neighbors.

When she told Esther this, her friend had laughed heartily.

“It is a sad indictment of your faith in yourself that you harbor such doubts against Mr. Harding, my dear friend,” Esther had said. “Do you truly find it so difficult to believe that Mr. Harding’s feelings toward you may consist of a sincere and growing affection, which is exactly what you feel for him?”

And, of course, the truth was that Charity did find such a notion very difficult indeed to believe.

Of course, it was entirely appropriate that he had stopped short of declaring his affections, if affections were indeed what he wished to imply. Given that she had been so insulted by his forward behavior, she was pleased that he had learned from his mistakes and was proceeding at a more sedate pace. Calling upon her openly, under the watchful eye of her father, was precisely the thing to do.

But when he did the correct thing, when she heard his horse in the lane and looked out of an upper window to see that he was come, at last, she felt almost beside herself. She did not know what to do at all. How was she to behave with Mr. Harding in front of her father, when so much intimacy had already passed between them?

More to the point, how might Mr. Harding behave? Would he pretend not to know Charity at all, to be aloof and cold? Would he speak only to her father, to engage in lively exchanges with his old tutor and leave Charity excluded, in the way she always was from every substantial conversation?

All of these questions occurred to her at once as she hastily arranged her hair and hurried down to the parlor to receive Mr. Harding.

The Reverend Miller had not always been the way that he was now.

Charity could well remember a time when she was a little girl when his intellectualism and reserve had been combined with a real conviction and animation.

He was not the sort of man who had entered the clergy in order to live a reasonably comfortable and orderly life, and he was certainly not the type to take a cavalier attitude to his duties as a clergyman.

Indeed, his religious conviction as a young man had run very deep. He had been the third son of a country gentleman of some means, and could very likely have found some heiress to marry and lived as comfortably as a man of leisure.

But his vocation had pulled him very strongly, and when he had met Charity’s mother, he had judged her to be the finest partner in his calling that he could possibly ask for, or so he had always said. Charity knew in her heart that the reason that he wanted her to be the wife of a clergyman was that, to his mind, there was no higher office for a woman.

The change in Charity’s father could be traced back to when her mother died. After that, he had grown fretful, rigid in his opinions and demanding in his wishes, particularly those wishes directed toward his daughter. The father that Charity had once somewhat admired had been replaced by a tyrant. If he loved his daughter, then the love was primarily demonstrated through the control that he exacted over her.

Which was all to say that it was painfully evident that the Reverend Miller was not pleased to receive Mr. Harding in his parlor, much less to see the involuntary smile that sprang up on his daughter’s face when she greeted the young man.

“Well, Daughter,” he said at length, “I presume that you remember the Duke’s son, Mr. Harding.”

“Of course,” she said, averting her eyes from Mr. Harding’s face and doing her best to look solely at her father. “Indeed, we met at the ball only the other day.”

“How delightful.”

For a time they spoke of the usual things that one speaks of during a morning call. The weather, the entertainment that was taking place in the village that week. They did a splendid job of ignoring all the painful realities of the present situation and the fact of Mr. Harding’s long absence from the area, his estrangement from his father, his precarious situation.

But there must have been something that the vicar picked up upon.

Perhaps it was some shy smile that Adam and Charity shared.

“Mr. Harding,” the vicar said abruptly, standing up. “I am delighted that you have called.”

The tone of his voice betrayed the lie in his words beyond all doubt.

“Delighted,” the Reverend Miller continued, “and I would very much like to continue this discussion further. However, I am sorry to inform you that I am in haste to finish my week’s sermon. Therefore, I am afraid, we will have to cut this pleasure short.”

It was evident from Mr. Harding’s face that he understand the Reverend’s meaning exactly. He glanced at Charity — a brief look, but a burning one — and rose slowly to his feet.

“I should be very sorry to trouble you if you are otherwise engaged,” he said, his voice careful and correct. “I will take my leave of you now.”

The Reverend Miller nodded. His lips had formed a thin line of displeasure that he clearly saw no reason to conceal.

“I shall show you out myself,” he said. “Charity, would you run to the kitchen and see what arrangements have been made for this evening’s dinner?”

Charity stood up and nodded. She longed to look at Mr. Harding, to send him an expression that would convey all her regret at her father’s behavior, but she simply did not dare.

“Good day, Mr. Harding,” she said and left the room, not daring to give a backward look.