'I cannot help it,' she said, turning to get away.

'You came here with the intention to fulfil the Word?'

'But I was mistaken.'

'Then why did you come?'

She tacitly implied that to be a question she did not care to
answer. 'Please say no more to me,' she murmured, and
hastened to withdraw.

During this unexpected dialogue (which had reached Somerset's
ears through the open windows) that young man's feelings had
flown hither and thither between minister and lady in a most
capricious manner: it had seemed at one moment a rather
uncivil thing of her, charming as she was, to give the
minister and the water-bearers so much trouble for nothing;
the next, it seemed like reviving the ancient cruelties of the
ducking-stool to try to force a girl into that dark water if
she had not a mind to it. But the minister was not without
insight, and he had seen that it would be useless to say more.
The crestfallen old man had to turn round upon the
congregation and declare officially that the baptism was
postponed.

She passed through the door into the vestry. During the
exciting moments of her recusancy there had been a perceptible
flutter among the sensitive members of the congregation;
nervous Dissenters seeming to be at one with nervous