← catalogue

A Dark Night's Work

by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell · English · Gutenberg #2522 · 391,466 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Dark Night's Work
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: A Dark Night's Work

Author: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell


        
Release date: February 1, 2001 [eBook #2522]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2522

Credits: Transcribed from the 1896 Smith, Elder and Co. "Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales" edition by David Price


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DARK NIGHT'S WORK ***






Transcribed from the 1896 Smith, Elder and Co. "Lizzie Leigh and Other
Tales" edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk.





A DARK NIGHT'S WORK
by Elizabeth Gaskell


CHAPTER I.


In the county town of a certain shire there lived (about forty years ago)
one Mr. Wilkins, a conveyancing attorney of considerable standing.

The certain shire was but a small county, and the principal town in it
contained only about four thousand inhabitants; so in saying that Mr.
Wilkins was the principal lawyer in Hamley, I say very little, unless I
add that he transacted all the legal business of the gentry for twenty
miles round.  His grandfather had established the connection; his father
had consolidated and strengthened it, and, indeed, by his wise and
upright conduct, as well as by his professional skill, had obtained for
himself the position of confidential friend to many of the surrounding
families of distinction.  He visited among them in a way which no mere
lawyer had ever done before; dined at their tables--he alone, not
accompanied by his wife, be it observed; rode to the meet occasionally as
if by accident, although he was as well mounted as any squire among them,
and was often persuaded (after a little coquetting about "professional
engagements," and "being wanted at the office") to have a run with his
clients; nay, once or twice he forgot his usual caution, was first in at
the death, and rode home with the brush.  But in general he knew his
place; as his place was held to be in that aristocratic county, and in
those days.  Nor let be supposed that he was in any way a toadeater.  He
respected himself too much for that.  He would give the most unpalatable
advice, if need were; would counsel an unsparing reduction of expenditure
to an extravagant man; would recommend such an abatement of family pride
as paved the way for one or two happy marriages in some instances; nay,
what was the most likely piece of conduct of all to give offence forty
years ago, he would speak up for an unjustly-used tenant; and that with
so much temperate and well-timed wisdom and good feeling, that he more
than once gained his point.  He had one son, Edward.  This boy was the
secret joy and pride of his father's heart.  For himself he was not in
the least ambitious, but it did cost him a hard struggle to acknowledge
that his own business was too lucrative, and brought in too large an
income, to pass away into the hands of a stranger, as it would do if he
indulged his ambition for his son by giving him a college education and
making him into a barrister.  This determination on the more prudent side
of the argument took place while Edward was at Eton.  The lad had,
perhaps, the largest allowance of pocket-money of any boy at school; and
he had always looked forward to going to Christ Church along with his
fellows, the sons of the squires, his father's employers.  It was a
severe mortification to him to find that his destiny was changed, and
that he had to return to Hamley to be articled to his father, and to
assume the hereditary subservient position to lads whom he had licked in
the play-ground, and beaten at learning.

His father tried to compensate him for the disappointment by every
indulgence which money could purchase.  Edward's horses were even finer
than those of his father; his literary tastes were kept up and fostered,
by his father's permission to form an extensive library, for which
purpose a noble room was added to Mr. Wilkins's already extensive house
in the suburbs of Hamley.  And after his year of legal study in London
his father sent him to make the grand tour, with something very like
carte blanche as to expenditure, to judge from the packages which were
sent home from various parts of the Continent.

At last he came home--came back to settle as his father's partner at
Hamley.  He was a son to be proud of, and right down proud was old Mr.
Wilkins of his handsome, accomplished, gentlemanly lad.  For Edward was
not one to be spoilt by the course of indulgence he had passed through;
at least, if it had done him an injury, the effects were at present
hidden from view.  He had no vulgar vices; he was, indeed, rather too
refined for the society he was likely to be thrown into, even supposing
that society to consist of the highest of his father's employers.  He was
well read, and an artist of no mean pretensions.  Above all, "his heart
was in the right place," as his father used to observe.  Nothing could
exceed the deference he always showed to him.  His mother had long been
dead.

I do not know whether it was Edward's own ambition or his proud father's
wishes that had led him to attend the Hamley assemblies.  I should
conjecture the latter, for Edward had of himself too much good taste to
wish to intrude into any society.  In the opinion of all the shire, no
society had more reason to consider itself select than that which met at
every full moon in the Hamley assembly-room, an excrescence built on to
the principal inn in the town by the joint subscription of all the county
families.  Into those choice and mysterious precincts no towns person was
ever allowed to enter; no professional man might set his foot therein; no
infantry officer saw the interior of that ball, or that card-room.  The
old original subscribers would fain have had a man prove his sixteen
quarterings before he might make his bow to the queen of the night; but
the old original founders of the Hamley assemblies were dropping off;
minuets had vanished with them, country dances had died away; quadrilles
were in high vogue--nay, one or two of the high magnates of ---shire were
trying to introduce waltzing, as they had seen it in London, where it had
come in with the visit of the allied sovereigns, when Edward Wilkins made
his _debut_ on these boards.  He had been at many splendid assemblies
abroad, but still the little old ballroom attached to the George Inn in
his native town was to him a place grander and more awful than the most
magnificent saloons he had seen in Paris or Rome.  He laughed at himself
for this unreasonable feeling of awe; but there it was notwithstanding.
He had been dining at the house of one of the lesser gentry, who was
under considerable obligations to his father, and who was the parent of
eight "muckle-mou'ed" daughters, so hardly likely to oppose much
aristocratic resistance to the elder Mr. Wilkins's clearly implied wish
that Edward should be presented at the Hamley assembly-rooms.  But many a
squire glowered and looked black at the introduction of Wilkins the
attorney's son into the sacred precincts; and perhaps there would have
been much more mortification than pleasure in this assembly to the young
man, had it not been for an incident that occurred pretty late in the
evening.  The lord-lieutenant of the county usually came with a large
party to the Hamley assemblies once in a season; and this night he was
expected, and with him a fashionable duchess and her daughters.  But time
wore on, and they did not make their appearance.  At last there was a
rustling and a bustling, and in sailed the superb party.  For a few
minutes dancing was stopped; the earl led the duchess to a sofa; some of
their acquaintances came up to speak to them; and then the quadrilles
were finished in rather a flat manner.  A country dance followed, in
which none of the lord-lieutenant's party joined; then there was a
consultation, a request, an inspection of the dancers, a message to the
orchestra, and the band struck up a waltz; the duchess's daughters flew
off to the music, and some more young ladies seemed ready to follow, but,
alas! there was a lack of gentlemen acquainted with the new-fashioned
dance.  One of the stewards bethought him of young Wilkins, only just
returned from the Continent.  Edward was a beautiful dancer, and waltzed
to admiration.  For his next partner he had one of the Lady ---s; for the
duchess, to whom the--shire squires and their little county politics and
contempts were alike unknown, saw no reason why her lovely Lady Sophy
should not have a good partner, whatever his pedigree might be, and
begged the stewards to introduce Mr. Wilkins to her.  After this night
his fortune was made with the young ladies of the Hamley assemblies.  He
was not unpopular with the mammas; but the heavy squires still looked at
him askance, and the heirs (whom he had licked at Eton) called him an
upstart behind his back.




CHAPTER II.


It was not a satisfactory situation.  Mr. Wilkins had given his son an
education and tastes beyond his position.  He could not associate with
either profit or pleasure with the doctor or the brewer of Hamley; the
vicar was old and deaf, the curate a raw young man, half frightened at
the sound of his own voice.  Then, as to matrimony--for the idea of his
marriage was hardly more present in Edward's mind than in that of his
father--he could scarcely fancy bringing home any one of the young ladies
of Hamley to the elegant mansion, so full of suggestion and association
to an educated person, so inappropriate a dwelling for an ignorant,
uncouth, ill-brought-up girl.  Yet Edward was fully aware, if his fond
father was not, that of all the young ladies who were glad enough of him
as a partner at the Hamley assemblies, there was not of them but would
have considered herself affronted by an offer of marriage from an
attorney, the son and grandson of attorneys.  The young man had perhaps
received many a slight and mortification pretty quietly during these
years, which yet told upon his character in after life.  Even at this
very time they were having their effect.  He was of too sweet a
disposition to show resentment, as many men would have done.  But
nevertheless he took a secret pleasure in the power which his father's
money gave him.  He would buy an expensive horse after five minutes'
conversation as to the price, about which a needy heir of one of the
proud county families had been haggling for three weeks.  His dogs were
from the best kennels in England, no matter at what cost; his guns were
the newest and most improved make; and all these were expenses on objects
which were among those of daily envy to the squires and squires' sons
around.  They did not much care for the treasures of art, which report
said were being accumulated in Mr. Wilkins's house.  But they did covet
the horses and hounds he possessed, and the young man knew that they
coveted, and rejoiced in it.

By-and-by he formed a marriage, which went as near as marriages ever do
towards pleasing everybody.  He was desperately in love with Miss
Lamotte, so he was delighted when she consented to be his wife.  His
father was delighted in his delight, and, besides, was charmed to
remember that Miss Lamotte's mother had been Sir Frank Holster's younger
sister, and that, although her marriage had been disowned by her family,
as beneath her in rank, yet no one could efface her name out of the
Baronetage, where Lettice, youngest daughter of Sir Mark Holster, born
1772, married H. Lamotte, 1799, died 1810, was duly chronicled.  She had
left two children, a boy and a girl, of whom their uncle, Sir Frank, took
charge, as their father was worse than dead--an outlaw whose name was
never mentioned.  Mark Lamotte was in the army; Lettice had a dependent
position in her uncle's family; not intentionally made more dependent
than was rendered necessary by circumstances, but still dependent enough
to grate on the feelings of a sensitive girl, whose natural susceptibilty
to slights was redoubled by the constant recollection of her father's
disgrace.  As Mr. Wilkins well knew, Sir Frank was considerably involved;
but it was with very mixed feelings that he listened to the suit which
would provide his penniless niece with a comfortable, not to say
luxurious, home, and with a handsome, accomplished young man of
unblemished character for a husband.  He said one or two bitter and
insolent things to Mr. Wilkins, even while he was giving his consent to
the match; that was his temper, his proud, evil temper; but he really and
permanently was satisfied with the connection, though he would
occasionally turn round on his nephew-in-law, and sting him with a covert
insult, as to his want of birth, and the inferior position which he held,
forgetting, apparently, that his own brother-in-law and Lettice's father
might be at any moment brought to the bar of justice if he attempted to
re-enter his native country.

Edward was annoyed at all this; Lettice resented it.  She loved her
husband dearly, and was proud of him, for she had discernment enough to
see how superior he was in every way to her cousins, the young Holsters,
who borrowed his horses, drank his wines, and yet had caught their
father's habit of sneering at his profession.  Lettice wished that Edward
would content himself with a purely domestic life, would let himself drop
out of the company of the ---shire squirearchy, and find his relaxation
with her, in their luxurious library, or lovely drawing-room, so full of
white gleaming statues, and gems of pictures.  But, perhaps, this was too
much to expect of any man, especially of one who felt himself fitted in
many ways to shine in society, and who was social by nature.  Sociality
in that county at that time meant conviviality.  Edward did not care for
wine, and yet he was obliged to drink--and by-and-by he grew to pique
himself on his character as a judge of wine.  His father by this time was
dead; dead, happy old man, with a contented heart--his affairs
flourishing, his poorer neighbours loving him, his richer respecting him,
his son and daughter-in-law, the most affectionate and devoted that ever
man had, and his healthy conscience at peace with his God.

Lettice could have lived to herself and her husband and children.  Edward
daily required more and more the stimulus of society.  His wife wondered
how he could care to accept dinner invitations from people who treated
him as "Wilkins the attorney, a very good sort of fellow," as they
introduced him to strangers who might be staying in the country, but who
had no power to appreciate the taste, the talents, the impulsive artistic
nature which she held so dear.  She forgot that by accepting such
invitations Edward was occasionally brought into contact with people not
merely of high conventional, but of high intellectual rank; that when a
certain amount of wine had dissipated his sense of inferiority of rank
and position, he was a brilliant talker, a man to be listened to and
admired even by wandering London statesmen, professional diners-out, or
any great authors who might find themselves visitors in a ---shire
country-house.  What she would have had him share from the pride of her
heart, she should have warned him to avoid from the temptations to sinful
extravagance which it led him into.  He had begun to spend more than he
ought, not in intellectual--though that would have been wrong--but in
purely sensual things.  His wines, his table, should be such as no
squire's purse or palate could command.  His dinner-parties--small in
number, the viands rare and delicate in quality, and sent up to table by
an Italian cook--should be such as even the London stars should notice
with admiration.  He would have Lettice dressed in the richest materials,
the most delicate lace; jewellery, he said, was beyond their means;
glancing with proud humility at the diamonds of the elder ladies, and the
alloyed gold of the younger.  But he managed to spend as much on his
wife's lace as would have bought many a set of inferior jewellery.
Lettice well became it all.  If as people said, her father had been
nothing but a French adventurer, she bore traces of her nature in her
grace, her delicacy, her fascinating and elegant ways of doing all
things.  She was made for society; and yet she hated it.  And one day she
went out of it altogether and for evermore.  She had been well in the
morning when Edward went down to his office in Hamley.  At noon he was
sent for by hurried trembling messengers.  When he got home breathless
and uncomprehending, she was past speech.  One glance from her lovely
loving black eyes showed that she recognised him with the passionate
yearning that had been one of the characteristics of her love through
life.  There was no word passed between them.  He could not speak, any
more than could she.  He knelt down by her.  She was dying; she was dead;
and he knelt on immovable.  They brought him his eldest child, Ellinor,
in utter despair what to do in order to rouse him.  They had no thought
as to the effect on her, hitherto shut up in the nursery during this busy
day of confusion and alarm.  The child had no idea of death, and her
father, kneeling and tearless, was far less an object of surprise or
interest to her than her mother, lying still and white, and not turning
her head to smile at her darling.

"Mamma! mamma!" cried the child, in shapeless terror.  But the mother
never stirred; and the father hid his face yet deeper in the bedclothes,
to stifle a cry as if a sharp knife had pierced his heart.  The child
forced her impetuous way from her attendants, and rushed to the bed.
Undeterred by deadly cold or stony immobility, she kissed the lips and
stroked the glossy raven hair, murmuring sweet words of wild love, such
as had passed between the mother and child often and often when no
witnesses were by; and altogether seemed so nearly beside herself in an
agony of love and terror, that Edward arose, and softly taking her in his
arms, bore her away, lying back like one dead (so exhausted was she by
the terrible emotion they had forced on her childish heart), into his
study, a little room opening out of the grand library, where on happy
evenings, never to come again, he and his wife were wont to retire to
have coffee together, and then perhaps stroll out of the glass-door into
the open air, the shrubbery, the fields--never more to be trodden by
those dear feet.  What passed between father and child in this seclusion
none could tell.  Late in the evening Ellinor's supper was sent for, and
the servant who brought it in saw the child lying as one dead in her
father's arms, and before he left the room watched his master feeding
her, the girl of six years of age, with as tender care as if she had been
a baby of six months.




CHAPTER III.


From that time the tie between father and daughter grew very strong and
tender indeed.  Ellinor, it is true, divided her affection between her
baby sister and her papa; but he, caring little for babies, had only a
theoretic regard for his younger child, while the elder absorbed all his
love.  Every day that he dined at home Ellinor was placed opposite to him
while he ate his late dinner; she sat where her mother had done during
the meal, although she had dined and even supped some time before on the
more primitive nursery fare.  It was half pitiful, half amusing, to see
the little girl's grave, thoughtful ways and modes of speech, as if
trying to act up to the dignity of her place as her father's companion,
till sometimes the little head nodded off to slumber in the middle of
lisping some wise little speech.  "Old-fashioned," the nurses called her,
and prophesied that she would not live long in consequence of her old-
fashionedness.  But instead of the fulfilment of this prophecy, the fat
bright baby was seized with fits, and was well, ill, and dead in a day!
Ellinor's grief was something alarming, from its quietness and
concealment.  She waited till she was left--as she thought--alone at
nights, and then sobbed and cried her passionate cry for "Baby, baby,
come back to me--come back;" till every one feared for the health of the
frail little girl whose childish affections had had to stand two such
shocks.  Her father put aside all business, all pleasure of every kind,
to win his darling from her grief.  No mother could have done more, no
tenderest nurse done half so much as Mr. Wilkins then did for Ellinor.

If it had not been for him she would have just died of her grief.  As it
was, she overcame it--but slowly, wearily--hardly letting herself love
anyone for some time, as if she instinctively feared lest all her strong
attachments should find a sudden end in death.  Her love--thus dammed up
into a small space--at last burst its banks, and overflowed on her
father.  It was a rich reward to him for all his care of her, and he took
delight--perhaps a selfish delight--in all the many pretty ways she
perpetually found of convincing him, if he had needed conviction, that he
was ever the first object with her.  The nurse told him that half an hour
or so before the earliest time at which he could be expected home in the
evenings, Miss Ellinor began to fold up her doll's things and lull the
inanimate treasure to sleep.  Then she would sit and listen with an
intensity of attention for his footstep.  Once the nurse had expressed
some wonder at the distance at which Ellinor could hear her father's
approach, saying that she had listened and could not hear a sound, to
which Ellinor had replied:

"Of course you cannot; he is not your papa!"

Then, when he went away in the morning, after he had kissed her, Ellinor
would run to a certain window from which she could watch him up the lane,
now hidden behind a hedge, now reappearing through an open space, again
out of sight, till he reached a great old beech-tree, where for an
instant more she saw him.  And then she would turn away with a sigh,
sometimes reassuring her unspoken fears by saying softly to herself,

"He will come again to-night."

Mr. Wilkins liked to feel his child dependent on him for all her
pleasures.  He was even a little jealous of anyone who devised a treat or
conferred a present, the first news of which did not come from or through
him.

At last it was necessary that Ellinor should have some more instruction
than her good old nurse could give.  Her father did not care to take upon
himself the office of teacher, which he thought he foresaw would
necessitate occasional blame, an occasional exercise of authority, which
might possibly render him less idolized by his little girl; so he
commissioned Lady Holster to choose out one among her many _protegees_
for a governess to his daughter.  Now, Lady Holster, who kept a sort of
amateur county register-office, was only too glad to be made of use in
this way; but when she inquired a little further as to the sort of person
required, all she could extract from Mr. Wilkins was:

"You know the kind of education a lady should have, and will, I am sure,
choose a governess for Ellinor better than I could direct you.  Only,
please, choose some one who will not marry me, and who will let Ellinor
go on making my tea, and doing pretty much what she likes, for she is so
good they need not try to make her better, only to teach her what a lady
should know."

Miss Monro was selected--a plain, intelligent, quiet woman of forty--and
it was difficult to decide whether she or Mr. Wilkins took the most pains
to avoid each other, acting with regard to Ellinor, pretty much like the
famous Adam and Eve in the weather-glass: when the one came out the other
went in.  Miss Monro had been tossed about and overworked quite enough in
her life not to value the privilege and indulgence of her evenings to
herself, her comfortable schoolroom, her quiet cozy teas, her book, or
her letter-writing afterwards.  By mutual agreement she did not interfere
with Ellinor and her ways and occupations on the evenings when the girl
had not her father for companion; and these occasions became more and
more frequent as years passed on, and the deep shadow was lightened which
the sudden death that had visited his household had cast over him.  As I
have said before, he was always a popular man at dinner-parties.  His
amount of intelligence and accomplishment was rare in ---shire, and if it
required more wine than formerly to bring his conversation up to the
desired point of range and brilliancy, wine was not an article spared or
grudged at the county dinner-tables.  Occasionally his business took him
up to London.  Hurried as these journeys might be, he never returned
without a new game, a new toy of some kind, to "make home pleasant to his
little maid," as he expressed himself.

He liked, too, to see what was doing in art, or in literature; and as he
gave pretty extensive orders for anything he admired, he was almost sure
to be followed down to Hamley by one or two packages or parcels, the
arrival and opening of which began soon to form the pleasant epochs in
Ellinor's grave though happy life.

The only person of his own standing with whom Mr. Wilkins kept up any
intercourse in Hamley was the new clergyman, a bachelor, about his own
age, a learned man, a fellow of his college, whose first claim on Mr.
Wilkins's attention was the fact that he had been travelling-bachelor for
his university, and had consequently been on the Continent about the very
same two years that Mr. Wilkins had been there; and although they had
never met, yet they had many common acquaintances and common
recollections to talk over of this period, which, after all, had been
about the most bright and hopeful of Mr. Wilkins's life.

Mr. Ness had an occasional pupil; that is to say, he never put himself
out of the way to obtain pupils, but did not refuse the entreaties
sometimes made to him that he would prepare a young man for college, by
allowing the said young man to reside and read with him.  "Ness's men"
took rather high honours, for the tutor, too indolent to find out work
for himself, had a certain pride in doing well the work that was found
for him.

When Ellinor was somewhere about fourteen, a young Mr. Corbet came to be
pupil to Mr. Ness.  Her father always called on the young men reading
with the clergyman, and asked them to his house.  His hospitality had in
course of time lost its _recherche_ and elegant character, but was always
generous, and often profuse.  Besides, it was in his character to like
the joyous, thoughtless company of the young better than that of the
old--given the same amount of refinement and education in both.

Mr. Corbet was a young man of very good family, from a distant county.  If
his character had not been so grave and deliberate, his years would only
have entitled him to be called a boy, for he was but eighteen at the time
when he came to read with Mr. Ness.  But many men of five-and-twenty have
not reflected so deeply as this young Mr. Corbet already had.  He had
considered and almost matured his plan for life; had ascertained what
objects he desired most to accomplish in the dim future, which is to many
at his age only a shapeless mist; and had resolved on certain steady
courses of action by which such objects were most likely to be secured.  A
younger son, his family connections and family interest pre-arranged a
legal career for him; and it was in accordance with his own tastes and
talents.  All, however, which his father hoped for him was, that he might
be able to make an income sufficient for a gentleman to live on.  Old Mr.
Corbet was hardly to be called ambitious, or, if he were, his ambition
was limited to views for the eldest son.  But Ralph intended to be a
distinguished lawyer, not so much for the vision of the woolsack, which I
suppose dances before the imagination of every young lawyer, as for the
grand intellectual exercise, and consequent power over mankind, that
distinguished lawyers may always possess if they choose.  A seat in
Parliament, statesmanship, and all the great scope for a powerful and
active mind that lay on each side of such a career--these were the
objects which Ralph Corbet set before himself.  To take high honours at
college was the first step to be accomplished; and in order to achieve
this Ralph had, not persuaded--persuasion was a weak instrument which he
despised--but gravely reasoned his father into consenting to pay the
large sum which Mr. Ness expected with a pupil.  The good-natured old
squire was rather pressed for ready money, but sooner than listen to an
argument instead of taking his nap after dinner he would have yielded
anything.  But this did not satisfy Ralph; his father's reason must be
convinced of the desirability of the step, as well as his weak will give
way.  The squire listened, looked wise, sighed; spoke of Edward's
extravagance and the girls' expenses, grew sleepy, and said, "Very true,"
"That is but reasonable, certainly," glanced at the door, and wondered
when his son would have ended his talking and go into the drawing-room;
and at length found himself writing the desired letter to Mr. Ness,
consenting to everything, terms and all.  Mr. Ness never had a more
satisfactory pupil; one whom he could treat more as an intellectual
equal.

Mr. Corbet, as Ralph was always called in Hamley, was resolute in his
cultivation of himself, even exceeding what his tutor demanded of him.  He
was greedy of information in the hours not devoted to absolute study.  Mr.
Ness enjoyed giving information, but most of all he liked the hard tough
arguments on all metaphysical and ethical questions in which Mr. Corbet
delighted to engage him.  They lived together on terms of happy equality,
having thus much in common.  They were essentially different, however,
although there were so many points of resemblance.  Mr. Ness was
unworldly as far as the idea of real unworldliness is compatible with a
turn for self-indulgence and indolence; while Mr. Corbet was deeply,
radically worldly, yet for the accomplishment of his object could deny
himself all the careless pleasures natural to his age.  The tutor and
pupil allowed themselves one frequent relaxation, that of Mr. Wilkins's
company.  Mr. Ness would stroll to the office after the six hours' hard
reading were over--leaving Mr. Corbet still bent over the table, book
bestrewn--and see what Mr. Wilkins's engagements were.  If he had nothing
better to do that evening, he was either asked to dine at the parsonage,
or he, in his careless hospitable way, invited the other two to dine with
him, Ellinor forming the fourth at table, as far as seats went, although
her dinner had been eaten early with Miss Monro.  She was little and
slight of her age, and her father never seemed to understand how she was
passing out of childhood.  Yet while in stature she was like a child; in
intellect, in force of character, in strength of clinging affection, she
was a woman.  There might be much of the simplicity of a child about her,
there was little of the undeveloped girl, varying from day to day like an
April sky, careless as to which way her own character is tending.  So the
two young people sat with their elders, and both relished the company
they were thus prematurely thrown into.  Mr. Corbet talked as much as
either of the other two gentlemen; opposing and disputing on any side, as
if to find out how much he could urge against received opinions.  Ellinor
sat silent; her dark eyes flashing from time to time in vehement
interest--sometimes in vehement indignation if Mr. Corbet, riding a-tilt
at everyone, ventured to attack her father.  He saw how this course
excited her, and rather liked pursuing it in consequence; he thought it
only amused him.

Another way in which Ellinor and Mr. Corbet were thrown together
occasionally was this: Mr. Ness and Mr. Wilkins shared the same _Times_
between them; and it was Ellinor's duty to see that the paper was
regularly taken from her father's house to the parsonage.  Her father
liked to dawdle over it.  Until Mr. Corbet had come to live with him, Mr.
Ness had not much cared at what time it was passed on to him; but the
young man took a strong interest in all public events, and especially in
all that was said about them.  He grew impatient if the paper was not
forthcoming, and would set off himself to go for it, sometimes meeting
the penitent breathless Ellinor in the long lane which led from Hamley to
Mr. Wilkins's house.  At first he used to receive her eager "Oh! I am so
sorry, Mr. Corbet, but papa has only just done with it," rather gruffly.
After a time he had the grace to tell her it did not signify; and by-and-
by he would turn back with her to give her some advice about her garden,
or her plants--for his mother and sisters were first-rate practical
gardeners, and he himself was, as he expressed it, "a capital consulting
physician for a sickly plant."

All this time his voice, his step, never raised the child's colour one
shade the higher, never made her heart beat the least quicker, as the
slightest sign of her father's approach was wont to do.  She learnt to
rely on Mr. Corbet for advice, for a little occasional sympathy, and for
much condescending attention.  He also gave her more fault-finding than
all the rest of the world put together; and, curiously enough, she was
grateful to him for it, for she really was humble and wished to improve.
He liked the attitude of superiority which this implied and exercised
right gave him.  They were very good friends at present.  Nothing more.

All this time I have spoken only of Mr. Wilkins's life as he stood in
relation to his daughter.  But there is far more to be said about it.
After his wife's death, he withdrew himself from society for a year or
two in a more positive and decided manner than is common with widowers.
It was during this retirement of his that he riveted his little
daughter's heart in such a way as to influence all her future life.

When he began to go out again, it might have been perceived--had any one
cared to notice--how much the different characters of his father and wife
had influenced him and kept him steady.  Not that he broke out into any
immoral conduct, but he gave up time to pleasure, which both old Mr.
Wilkins and Lettice would have quietly induced him to spend in the
office, superintending his business.  His indulgence in hunting, and all
field sports, had hitherto been only occasional; they now became
habitual, as far as the seasons permitted.  He shared a moor in Scotland
with one of the Holsters one year, persuading himself that the bracing
air was good for Ellinor's health.  But the year afterwards he took
another, this time joining with a comparative stranger; and on this moor
there was no house to which it was fit to bring a child and her
attendants.  He persuaded himself that by frequent journeys he could make
up for his absences from Hamley.  But journeys cost money; and he was
often away from his office when important business required attending to.
There was some talk of a new attorney setting up in Hamley, to be
supported by one or two of the more influential county families, who had
found Wilkins not so attentive as his father.  Sir Frank Holster sent for
his relation, and told him of this project, speaking to him, at the same
time, in pretty round terms on the folly of the life he was leading.
Foolish it certainly was, and as such Mr. Wilkins was secretly
acknowledging it; but when Sir Frank, lashing himself, began to talk of
his hearer's presumption in joining the hunt, in aping the mode of life
and amusements of the landed gentry, Edward fired up.  He knew how much
Sir Frank was dipped, and comparing it with the round sum his own father
had left him, he said some plain truths to Sir Frank which the latter
never forgave, and henceforth there was no intercourse between Holster
Court and Ford Bank, as Mr. Edward Wilkins had christened his father's
house on his first return from the Continent.

The conversation had two consequences besides the immediate one of the
quarrel.  Mr. Wilkins advertised for a responsible and confidential clerk
to conduct the business under his own superintendence; and he also wrote
to the Heralds' College to ask if he did not belong to the family bearing
the same name in South Wales--those who have since reassumed their
ancient name of De Winton.

Both applications were favorably answered.  A skilful, experienced,
middle-aged clerk was recommended to him by one of the principal legal
firms in London, and immediately engaged to come to Hamley at his own
terms; which were pretty high.  But, as Mr. Wilkins said it was worth any
money to pay for the relief from constant responsibility which such a
business as his involved, some people remarked that he had never appeared
to feel the responsibility very much hitherto, as witness his absences in
Scotland, and his various social engagements when at home; it had been
very different (they said) in his father's day.  The Heralds' College
held out hopes of affiliating him to the South Wales family, but it would
require time and money to make the requisite inquiries and substantiate
the claim.  Now, in many a place there would be none to contest the right
a man might have to assert that he belonged to such and such a family, or
even to assume their arms.  But it was otherwise in ---shire.  Everyone
was up in genealogy and heraldry, and considered filching a name and a
pedigree a far worse sin than any of those mentioned on the Commandments.
There were those among them who would doubt and dispute even the decision
of the Heralds' College; but with it, if in his favour, Mr. Wilkins
intended to be satisfied, and accordingly he wrote in reply to their
letter to say, that of course he was aware such inquiries would take a
considerable sum of money, but still he wished them to be made, and that
speedily.

Before the end of the year he went up to London to order a brougham to be
built (for Ellinor to drive out in wet weather, he said; but as going in
a closed carriage always made her ill, he used it principally himself in
driving to dinner-parties), with the De Winton Wilkinses' arms neatly
emblazoned on panel and harness.  Hitherto he had always gone about in a
dog-cart--the immediate descendant of his father's old-fashioned gig.

For all this, the squires, his employers, only laughed at him and did not
treat him with one whit more respect.

Mr. Dunster, the new clerk, was a quiet, respectable-looking man; you
could not call him a gentleman in manner, and yet no one could say he was
vulgar.  He had not much varying expression on his face, but a permanent
one of thoughtful consideration of the subject in hand, whatever it might
be, that would have fitted as well with the profession of medicine as
with that of law, and was quite the right look for either.  Occasionally
a bright flash of sudden intelligence lightened up his deep-sunk eyes,
but even this was quickly extinguished as by some inward repression, and
the habitually reflective, subdued expression returned to the face.  As
soon as he came into his situation, he first began quietly to arrange the
papers, and next the business of which they were the outer sign, into
more methodical order than they had been in since old Mr. Wilkins's
death.  Punctual to a moment himself, he looked his displeased surprise
when the inferior clerks came tumbling in half an hour after the time in
the morning; and his look was more effective than many men's words;
henceforward the subordinates were within five minutes of the appointed
hour for opening the office; but still he was always there before them.
Mr. Wilkins himself winced under his new clerk's order and punctuality;
Mr. Dunster's raised eyebrow and contraction of the lips at some woeful
confusion in the business of the office, chafed Mr. Wilkins more, far
more than any open expression of opinion would have done; for that he
could have met, and explained away as he fancied.  A secret respectful
dislike grew up in his bosom against Mr. Dunster.  He esteemed him, he
valued him, and he could not bear him.  Year after year Mr. Wilkins had
become more under the influence of his feelings, and less under the
command of his reason.  He rather cherished than repressed his nervous
repugnance to the harsh measured tones of Mr. Dunster's voice; the latter
spoke with a provincial twang which grated on his employer's sensitive
ear.  He was annoyed at a certain green coat which his new clerk brought
with him, and he watched its increasing shabbiness with a sort of
childish pleasure.  But by-and-by Mr. Wilkins found out that, from some
perversity of taste, Mr. Dunster always had his coats, Sunday and working-
day, made of this obnoxious colour; and this knowledge did not diminish
his secret irritation.  The worst of all, perhaps, was, that Mr. Dunster
was really invaluable in many ways; "a perfect treasure," as Mr. Wilkins
used to term him in speaking of him after dinner; but, for all that, he
came to hate his "perfect treasure," as he gradually felt that Dunster
had become so indispensable to the business that his chief could not do
without him.

The clients re-echoed Mr. Wilkins's words, and spoke of Mr. Dunster as
invaluable to his master; a thorough treasure, the very saving of the
business.  They had not been better attended to, not even in old Mr.
Wilkins's days; such a clear head, such a knowledge of law, such a
steady, upright fellow, always at his post.  The grating voice, the
drawling accent, the bottle-green coat, were nothing to them; far less
noticed, in fact, than Wilkins's expensive habits, the money he paid for
his wine and horses, and the nonsense of claiming kin with the Welsh
Wilkinses, and setting up his brougham to drive about ---shire lanes, and
be knocked to pieces over the rough round paving-stones thereof.

All these remarks did not come near Ellinor to trouble her life.  To her,
her dear father was the first of human beings; so sweet, so good, so
kind, so charming in conversation, so full of accomplishment and
information!  To her healthy, happy mind every one turned their bright
side.  She loved Miss Monro--all the servants--especially Dixon, the
coachman.  He had been her father's playfellow as a boy, and, with all
his respect and admiration for his master, the freedom of intercourse
that had been established between them then had never been quite lost.
Dixon was a fine, stalwart old fellow, and was as harmonious in his ways
with his master as Mr. Dunster was discordant; accordingly he was a great
favourite, and could say many a thing which might have been taken as
impertinent from another servant.

He was Ellinor's great confidant about many of her little plans and
projects; things that she dared not speak of to Mr. Corbet, who, after
her father and Dixon, was her next best friend.  This intimacy with Dixon
displeased Mr. Corbet.  He once or twice insinuated that he did not think
it was well to talk so familiarly as Ellinor did with a servant--one out
of a completely different class--such as Dixon.  Ellinor did not easily
take hints; every one had spoken plain out to her hitherto; so Mr. Corbet
had to say his meaning plain out at last.  Then, for the first time, he
saw her angry; but she was too young, too childish, to have words at will
to express her feelings; she only could say broken beginnings of
sentences, such as "What a shame!  Good, dear Dixon, who is as loyal and
true and kind as any nobleman.  I like him far better than you, Mr.
Corbet, and I shall talk to him."  And then she burst into tears and ran
away, and would not come to wish Mr. Corbet good-bye, though she knew she
should not see him again for a long time, as he was returning the next
day to his father's house, from whence he would go to Cambridge.

He was annoyed at this result of the good advice he had thought himself
bound to give to a motherless girl, who had no one to instruct her in the
proprieties in which his own sisters were brought up; he left Hamley both
sorry and displeased.  As for Ellinor, when she found out the next day
that he really was gone--gone without even coming to Ford Bank again to
see if she were not penitent for her angry words--gone without saying or
hearing a word of good-bye--she shut herself up in her room, and cried
more bitterly than ever, because anger against herself was mixed with her
regret for his loss.  Luckily, her father was dining out, or he would
have inquired what was the matter with his darling; and she would have
had to try to explain what could not be explained.  As it was, she sat
with her back to the light during the schoolroom tea, and afterwards,
when Miss Monro had settled down to her study of the Spanish language,
Ellinor stole out into the garden, meaning to have a fresh cry over her
own naughtiness and Mr. Corbet's departure; but the August evening was
still and calm, and put her passionate grief to shame, hushing her up, as
it were, with the other young creatures, who were being soothed to rest
by the serene time of day, and the subdued light of the twilight sky.

There was a piece of ground surrounding the flower-garden, which was not
shrubbery, nor wood, nor kitchen garden--only a grassy bit, out of which
a group of old forest trees sprang.  Their roots were heaved above
ground; their leaves fell in autumn so profusely that the turf was ragged
and bare in spring; but, to make up for this, there never was such a
place for snowdrops.

The roots of these old trees were Ellinor's favourite play-place; this
space between these two was her doll's kitchen, that its drawing-room,
and so on.  Mr. Corbet rather despised her contrivances for doll's
furniture, so she had not often brought him here; but Dixon delighted in
them, and contrived and planned with the eagerness of six years old
rather than forty.  To-night Ellinor went to this place, and there were
all a new collection of ornaments for Miss Dolly's sitting-room made out
of fir-bobs, in the prettiest and most ingenious way.  She knew it was
Dixon's doing and rushed off in search of him to thank him.

"What's the matter with my pretty?" asked Dixon, as soon as the pleasant
excitement of thanking and being thanked was over, and he had leisure to
look at her tear-stained face.

"Oh, I don't know!  Never mind," said she, reddening.

Dixon was silent for a minute or two, while she tried to turn off his
attention by her hurried prattle.

"There's no trouble afoot that I can mend?" asked he, in a minute or two.

"Oh, no!  It's really nothing--nothing at all," said she.  "It's only
that Mr. Corbet went away without saying good-bye to me, that's all."  And
she looked as if she should have liked to cry again.

"That was not manners," said Dixon, decisively.

"But it was my fault," replied Ellinor, pleading against the
condemnation.

Dixon looked at her pretty sharply from under his ragged bushy eyebrows.

"He had been giving me a lecture, and saying I didn't do what his sisters
did--just as if I were to be always trying to be like somebody else--and
I was cross and ran away."

"Then it was Missy who wouldn't say good-bye.  That was not manners in
Missy."

"But, Dixon, I don't like being lectured!"

"I reckon you don't get much of it.  But, indeed, my pretty, I daresay
Mr. Corbet was in the right; for, you see, master is busy, and Miss Monro
is so dreadful learned, and your poor mother is dead and gone, and you
have no one to teach you how young ladies go on; and by all accounts Mr.
Corbet comes of a good family.  I've heard say his father had the best
stud-farm in all Shropshire, and spared no money upon it; and the young
ladies his sisters will have been taught the best of manners; it might be
well for my pretty to hear how they go on."

"You dear old Dixon, you don't know anything about my lecture, and I'm
not going to tell you.  Only I daresay Mr. Corbet might be a little bit
right, though I'm sure he was a great deal wrong."

"But you'll not go on a-fretting--you won't now, there's a good young
lady--for master won't like it, and it'll make him uneasy, and he's
enough of trouble without your red eyes, bless them."

"Trouble--papa, trouble!  Oh, Dixon! what do you mean?" exclaimed
Ellinor, her face taking all a woman's intensity of expression in a
minute.


  "Nay, I know nought," said Dixon, evasively.  "Only that Dunster fellow
is not to my mind, and I think he potters the master sadly with his fid-
fad ways."

"I hate Mr. Dunster!" said Ellinor, vehemently.  "I won't speak a word to
him the next time he comes to dine with papa."

"Missy will do what papa likes best," said Dixon, admonishingly; and with
this the pair of "friends" parted,




CHAPTER IV.


The summer afterwards Mr. Corbet came again to read with Mr. Ness.  He
did not perceive any alteration in himself, and indeed his early-matured
character had hardly made progress during the last twelve months whatever
intellectual acquirements he might have made.  Therefore it was
astonishing to him to see the alteration in Ellinor Wilkins.  She had
shot up from a rather puny girl to a tall, slight young lady, with
promise of great beauty in the face, which a year ago had only been
remarkable for the fineness of the eyes.  Her complexion was clear now,
although colourless--twelve months ago he would have called it sallow--her
delicate cheek was smooth as marble, her teeth were even and white, and
her rare smiles called out a lovely dimple.

She met her former friend and lecturer with a grave shyness, for she
remembered well how they had parted, and thought he could hardly have
forgiven, much less forgotten, her passionate flinging away from him.  But
the truth was, after the first few hours of offended displeasure, he had
ceased to think of it at all.  She, poor child, by way of proving her
repentance, had tried hard to reform her boisterous tom-boy manners, in
order to show him that, although she would not give up her dear old
friend Dixon, at his or anyone's bidding, she would strive to profit by
his lectures in all things reasonable.  The consequence was, that she
suddenly appeared to him as an elegant dignified young lady, instead of
the rough little girl he remembered.  Still below her somewhat formal
manners there lurked the old wild spirit, as he could plainly see after a
little more watching; and he began to wish to call this out, and to
strive, by reminding her of old days, and all her childish frolics, to
flavour her subdued manners and speech with a little of the former
originality.

In this he succeeded.  No one, neither Mr. Wilkins, nor Miss Monro, nor
Mr. Ness, saw what this young couple were about--they did not know it
themselves; but before the summer was over they were desperately in love
with each other, or perhaps I should rather say, Ellinor was desperately
in love with him--he, as passionately as he could be with anyone; but in
him the intellect was superior in strength to either affections or
passions.

The causes of the blindness of those around them were these: Mr. Wilkins
still considered Ellinor as a little girl, as his own pet, his darling,
but nothing more.  Miss Monro was anxious about her own improvement.  Mr.
Ness was deep in a new edition of "Horace," which he was going to bring
out with notes.  I believe Dixon would have been keener sighted, but
Ellinor kept Mr. Corbet and Dixon apart for obvious reasons--they were
each her dear friends, but she knew that Mr. Corbet did not like Dixon,
and suspected that the feeling was mutual.

The only change of circumstances between this year and the previous one
consisted in this development of attachment between the young people.
Otherwise, everything went on apparently as usual.  With Ellinor the
course of the day was something like this: up early and into the garden
until breakfast time, when she made tea for her father and Miss Monro in
the dining-room, always taking care to lay a little nosegay of freshly-
gathered flowers by her father's plate.  After breakfast, when the
conversation had been on general and indifferent subjects, Mr. Wilkins
withdrew into the little study so often mentioned.  It opened out of a
passage that ran between the dining-room and the kitchen, on the left
hand of the hall.  Corresponding to the dining-room on the other side of
the hall was the drawing-room, with its side-window serving as a door
into a conservatory, and this again opened into the library.  Old Mr.
Wilkins had added a semicircular projection to the library, which was
lighted by a dome above, and showed off his son's Italian purchases of
sculpture.  The library was by far the most striking and agreeable room
in the house; and the consequence was that the drawing-room was seldom
used, and had the aspect of cold discomfort common to apartments rarely
occupied.  Mr. Wilkins's study, on the other side of the house, was also
an afterthought, built only a few years ago, and projecting from the
regularity of the outside wall; a little stone passage led to it from the
hall, small, narrow, and dark, and out of which no other door opened.

The study itself was a hexagon, one side window, one fireplace, and the
remaining four sides occupied with doors, two of which have been already
mentioned, another at the foot of the narrow winding stairs which led
straight into Mr. Wilkins's bedroom over the dining-room, and the fourth
opening into a path through the shrubbery to the right of the
flower-garden as you looked from the house.  This path led through the
stable-yard, and then by a short cut right into Hamley, and brought you
out close to Mr. Wilkins's office; it was by this way he always went and
returned to his business.  He used the study for a smoking and lounging
room principally, although he always spoke of it as a convenient place
for holding confidential communications with such of his clients as did
not like discussing their business within the possible hearing of all the
clerks in his office.  By the outer door he could also pass to the
stables, and see that proper care was taken at all times of his favourite
and valuable horses.  Into this study Ellinor would follow him of a
morning, helping him on with his great-coat, mending his gloves, talking
an infinite deal of merry fond nothing; and then, clinging to his arm,
she would accompany him in his visits to the stables, going up to the
shyest horses, and petting them, and patting them, and feeding them with
bread all the time that her father held converse with Dixon.  When he was
finally gone--and sometimes it was a long time first--she returned to the
schoolroom to Miss Monro, and tried to set herself hard at work on her
lessons.  But she had not much time for steady application; if her father
had cared for her progress in anything, she would and could have worked
hard at that study or accomplishment; but Mr. Wilkins, the ease and
pleasure loving man, did not wish to make himself into the pedagogue, as
he would have considered it, if he had ever questioned Ellinor with a
real steady purpose of ascertaining her intellectual progress.  It was
quite enough for him that her general intelligence and variety of
desultory and miscellaneous reading made her a pleasant and agreeable
companion for his hours of relaxation.

At twelve o'clock, Ellinor put away her books with joyful eagerness,
kissed Miss Monro, asked her if they should go a regular walk, and was
always rather thankful when it was decided that it would be better to
stroll in the garden--a decision very often come to, for Miss Monro hated
fatigue, hated dirt, hated scrambling, and dreaded rain; all of which are
evils, the chances of which are never far distant from country walks.  So
Ellinor danced out into the garden, worked away among her flowers, played
at the old games among the roots of the trees, and, when she could,
seduced Dixon into the flower-garden to have a little consultation as to
the horses and dogs.  For it was one of her father's few strict rules
that Ellinor was never to go into the stable-yard unless he were with
her; so these _tete-a-tetes_ with Dixon were always held in the flower-
garden, or bit of forest ground surrounding it.  Miss Monro sat and
basked in the sun, close to the dial, which made the centre of the gay
flower-beds, upon which the dining-room and study windows looked.

At one o'clock, Ellinor and Miss Monro dined.  An hour was allowed for
Miss Monro's digestion, which Ellinor again spent out of doors, and at
three, lessons began again and lasted till five.  At that time they went
to dress preparatory for the schoolroom tea at half-past five.  After tea
Ellinor tried to prepare her lessons for the next day; but all the time
she was listening for her father's footstep--the moment she heard that,
she dashed down her book, and flew out of the room to welcome and kiss
him.  Seven was his dinner-hour; he hardly ever dined alone; indeed, he
often dined from home four days out of seven, and when he had no
engagement to take him out he liked to have some one to keep him company:
Mr. Ness very often, Mr. Corbet along with him if he was in Hamley, a
stranger friend, or one of his clients.  Sometimes, reluctantly, and when
he fancied he could not avoid the attention without giving offence, Mr.
Wilkins would ask Mr. Dunster, and then the two would always follow
Ellinor into the library at a very early hour, as if their subjects for
_tete-a-tete_ conversation were quite exhausted.  With all his other
visitors, Mr. Wilkins sat long--yes, and yearly longer; with Mr. Ness,
because they became interested in each other's conversation; with some of
the others, because the wine was good, and the host hated to spare it.

Mr. Corbet used to leave his tutor and Mr. Wilkins and saunter into the
library.  There sat Ellinor and Miss Monro, each busy with their
embroidery.  He would bring a stool to Ellinor's side, question and tease
her, interest her, and they would become entirely absorbed in each other,
Miss Monro's sense of propriety being entirely set at rest by the
consideration that Mr. Wilkins must know what he was about in allowing a
young man to become thus intimate with his daughter, who, after all, was
but a child.

Mr. Corbet had lately fallen into the habit of walking up to Ford Bank
for _The Times_ every day, near twelve o'clock, and lounging about in the
garden until one; not exactly with either Ellinor or Miss Monro, but
certainly far more at the beck and call of the one than of the other.

Miss Monro used to think he would have been glad to stay and lunch at
their early dinner, but she never gave the invitation, and he could not
well stay without her expressed sanction.  He told Ellinor all about his
mother and sisters, and their ways of going on, and spoke of them and of
his father as of people she was one day certain to know, and to know
intimately; and she did not question or doubt this view of things; she
simply acquiesced.

He had some discussion with himself as to whether he should speak to her,
and so secure her promise to be his before returning to Cambridge or not.
He did not like the formality of an application to Mr. Wilkins, which
would, after all, have been the proper and straightforward course to
pursue with a girl of her age--she was barely sixteen.  Not that he
anticipated any difficulty on Mr. Wilkins's part; his approval of the
intimacy which at their respective ages was pretty sure to lead to an
attachment, was made as evident as could be by actions without words.  But
there would have to be reference to his own father, who had no notion of
the whole affair, and would be sure to treat it as a boyish fancy; as if
at twenty-one Ralph was not a man, as clear and deliberative in knowing
his own mind, as resolute as he ever would be in deciding upon the course
of exertion that should lead him to independence and fame, if such were
to be attained by clear intellect and a strong will.

No; to Mr. Wilkins he would not speak for another year or two.

But should he tell Ellinor in direct terms of his love--his intention to
marry her?

Again he inclined to the more prudent course of silence.  He was not
afraid of any change in his own inclinations: of them he was sure.  But
he looked upon it in this way: If he made a regular declaration to her
she would be bound to tell it to her father.  He should not respect her
or like her so much if she did not.  And yet this course would lead to
all the conversations, and discussions, and references to his own father,
which made his own direct appeal to Mr. Wilkins appear a premature step
to him.

Whereas he was as sure of Ellinor's love for him as if she had uttered
all the vows that women ever spoke; he knew even better than she did how
fully and entirely that innocent girlish heart was his own.  He was too
proud to dread her inconstancy for an instant; "besides," as he went on
to himself, as if to make assurance doubly sure, "whom does she see?
Those stupid Holsters, who ought to be only too proud of having such a
girl for their cousin, ignore her existence, and spoke slightingly of her
father only the very last time I dined there.  The country people in this
precisely Boeotian ---shire clutch at me because my father goes up to the
Plantagenets for his pedigree--not one whit for myself--and neglect
Ellinor; and only condescend to her father because old Wilkins was nobody-
knows-who's son.  So much the worse for them, but so much the better for
me in this case.  I'm above their silly antiquated prejudices, and shall
be only too glad when the fitting time comes to make Ellinor my wife.
After all, a prosperous attorney's daughter may not be considered an
unsuitable match for me--younger son as I am.  Ellinor will make a
glorious woman three or four years hence; just the style my father
admires--such a figure, such limbs.  I'll be patient, and bide my time,
and watch my opportunities, and all will come right."

So he bade Ellinor farewell in a most reluctant and affectionate manner,
although his words might have been spoken out in Hamley market-place, and
were little different from what he said to Miss Monro.  Mr. Wilkins half
expected a disclosure to himself of the love which he suspected in the
young man; and when that did not come, he prepared himself for a
confidence from Ellinor.  But she had nothing to tell him, as he very
well perceived from the child's open unembarrassed manner when they were
left alone together after dinner.  He had refused an invitation, and
shaken off Mr. Ness, in order to have this confidential _tete-a-tete_
with his motherless girl; and there was nothing to make confidence of.  He
was half inclined to be angry; but then he saw that, although sad, she
was so much at peace with herself and with the world, that he, always an
optimist, began to think the young man had done wisely in not tearing
open the rosebud of her feelings too prematurely.

The next two years passed over in much the same way--or a careless
spectator might have thought so.  I have heard people say, that if you
look at a regiment advancing with steady step over a plain on a review-
day, you can hardly tell that they are not merely marking time on one
spot of ground, unless you compare their position with some other object
by which to mark their progress, so even is the repetition of the
movement.  And thus the sad events of the future life of this father and
daughter were hardly perceived in their steady advance, and yet over the
monotony and flat uniformity of their days sorrow came marching down upon
them like an armed man.  Long before Mr. Wilkins had recognised its
shape, it was approaching him in the distance--as, in fact, it is
approaching all of us at this very time; you, reader, I, writer, have
each our great sorrow bearing down upon us.  It may be yet beyond the
dimmest point of our horizon, but in the stillness of the night our
hearts shrink at the sound of its coming footstep.  Well is it for those
who fall into the hands of the Lord rather than into the hands of men;
but worst of all is it for him who has hereafter to mingle the gall of
remorse with the cup held out to him by his doom.

Mr. Wilkins took his ease and his pleasure yet more and more every year
of his life; nor did the quality of his ease and his pleasure improve; it
seldom does with self-indulgent people.  He cared less for any books that
strained his faculties a little--less for engravings and
sculptures--perhaps more for pictures.  He spent extravagantly on his
horses; "thought of eating and drinking."  There was no open vice in all
this, so that any awful temptation to crime should come down upon him,
and startle him out of his mode of thinking and living; half the people
about him did much the same, as far as their lives were patent to his
unreflecting observation.  But most of his associates had their duties to
do, and did them with a heart and a will, in the hours when he was not in
their company.  Yes! I call them duties, though some of them might be
self-imposed and purely social; they were engagements they had entered
into, either tacitly or with words, and that they fulfilled.  From Mr.
Hetherington, the Master of the Hounds, who was up at--no one knows what
hour, to go down to the kennel and see that the men did their work well
and thoroughly, to stern old Sir Lionel Playfair, the upright magistrate,
the thoughtful, conscientious landlord--they did their work according to
their lights; there were few laggards among those with whom Mr. Wilkins
associated in the field or at the dinner-table.  Mr. Ness--though as a
clergyman he was not so active as he might have been--yet even Mr. Ness
fagged away with his pupils and his new edition of one of the classics.
Only Mr. Wilkins, dissatisfied with his position, neglected to fulfil the
duties thereof.  He imitated the pleasures, and longed for the fancied
leisure of those about him; leisure that he imagined would be so much
more valuable in the hands of a man like himself, full of intellectual
tastes and accomplishments, than frittered away by dull boors of
untravelled, uncultivated squires--whose company, however, be it said by
the way, he never refused.

And yet daily Mr. Wilkins was sinking from the intellectually to the
sensually self-indulgent man.  He lay late in bed, and hated Mr. Dunster
for his significant glance at the office-clock when he announced to his
master that such and such a client had been waiting more than an hour to
keep an appointment.  "Why didn't you see him yourself, Dunster?  I'm
sure you would have done quite as well as me," Mr. Wilkins sometimes
replied, partly with a view of saying something pleasant to the man whom
he disliked and feared.  Mr. Dunster always replied, in a meek matter-of-
fact tone, "Oh, sir, they wouldn't like to talk over their affairs with a
subordinate."

And every time he said this, or some speech of the same kind, the idea
came more and more clearly into Mr. Wilkins's head, of how pleasant it
would be to himself to take Dunster into partnership, and thus throw all
the responsibility of the real work and drudgery upon his clerk's
shoulders.  Importunate clients, who would make appointments at
unseasonable hours and would keep to them, might confide in the partner,
though they would not in the clerk.  The great objections to this course
were, first and foremost, Mr. Wilkins's strong dislike to Mr. Dunster--his
repugnance to his company, his dress, his voice, his ways--all of which
irritated his employer, till his state of feeling towards Dunster might
be called antipathy; next, Mr. Wilkins was fully aware of the fact that
all Mr. Dunster's actions and words were carefully and thoughtfully pre-
arranged to further the great unspoken desire of his life--that of being
made a partner where he now was only a servant.  Mr. Wilkins took a
malicious pleasure in tantalizing Mr. Dunster by such speeches as the one
I have just mentioned, which always seemed like an opening to the desired
end, but still for a long time never led any further.  Yet all the while
that end was becoming more and more certain, and at last it was reached.

Mr. Dunster always suspected that the final push was given by some
circumstance from without; some reprimand for neglect--some threat of
withdrawal of business which his employer had received; but of this he
could not be certain; all he knew was, that Mr. Wilkins proposed the
partnership to him in about as ungracious a way as such an offer could be
made; an ungraciousness which, after all, had so little effect on the
real matter in hand, that Mr. Dunster could pass over it with a private
sneer, while taking all possible advantage of the tangible benefit it was
now in his power to accept.

Mr. Corbet's attachment to Ellinor had been formally disclosed to her
just before this time.  He had left college, entered at the Middle
Temple, and was fagging away at law, and feeling success in his own
power; Ellinor was to "come out" at the next Hamley assemblies; and her
lover began to be jealous of the possible admirers her striking
appearance and piquant conversation might attract, and thought it a good
time to make the success of his suit certain by spoken words and
promises.

He needed not have alarmed himself even enough to make him take this
step, if he had been capable of understanding Ellinor's heart as fully as
he did her appearance and conversation.  She never missed the absence of
formal words and promises.  She considered herself as fully engaged to
him, as much pledged to marry him and no one else, before he had asked
the final question, as afterwards.  She was rather surprised at the
necessity for those decisive words,

"Ellinor, dearest, will you--can you marry me?" and her reply was--given
with a deep blush I must record, and in a soft murmuring tone--

"Yes--oh, yes--I never thought of anything else."

"Then I may speak to your father, may not I, darling?"

"He knows; I am sure he knows; and he likes you so much.  Oh, how happy I
am!"

"But still I must speak to him before I go.  When can I see him, my
Ellinor?  I must go back to town at four o'clock."

"I heard his voice in the stable-yard only just before you came.  Let me
go and find out if he is gone to the office yet."

No! to be sure he was not gone.  He was quietly smoking a cigar in his
study, sitting in an easy-chair near the open window, and leisurely
glancing at all the advertisements in _The Times_.  He hated going to the
office more and more since Dunster had become a partner; that fellow gave
himself such airs of investigation and reprehension.

He got up, took the cigar out of his mouth, and placed a chair for Mr.
Corbet, knowing well why he had thus formally prefaced his entrance into
the room with a--

"Can I have a few minutes' conversation with you, Mr. Wilkins?"

"Certainly, my dear fellow.  Sit down.  Will you have a cigar?"

"No!  I never smoke."  Mr. Corbet despised all these kinds of
indulgences, and put a little severity into his refusal, but quite
unintentionally; for though he was thankful he was not as other men, he
was not at all the person to trouble himself unnecessarily with their
reformation.

"I want to speak to you about Ellinor.  She says she thinks you must be
aware of our mutual attachment."

"Well," said Mr. Wilkins--he had resumed his cigar, partly to conceal his
agitation at what he knew was coming--"I believe I have had my
suspicions.  It is not very long since I was young myself."  And he
sighed over the recollection of Lettice, and his fresh, hopeful youth.

"And I hope, sir, as you have been aware of it, and have never manifested
any disapprobation of it, that you will not refuse your consent--a
consent I now ask you for--to our marriage."

Mr. Wilkins did not speak for a little while--a touch, a thought, a word
more would have brought him to tears; for at the last he found it hard to
give the consent which would part him from his only child.  Suddenly he
got up, and putting his hand into that of the anxious lover (for his
silence had rendered Mr. Corbet anxious up to a certain point of
perplexity--he could not understand the implied he would and he would
not), Mr. Wilkins said,

"Yes!  God bless you both!  I will give her to you, some day--only it
must be a long time first.  And now go away--go back to her--for I can't
stand this much longer."

Mr. Corbet returned to Ellinor.  Mr. Wilkins sat down and buried his head
in his hands, then went to his stable, and had Wildfire saddled for a
good gallop over the country.  Mr. Dunster waited for him in vain at the
office, where an obstinate old country gentleman from a distant part of
the shire would ignore Dunster's existence as a partner, and
pertinaciously demanded to see Mr. Wilkins on important business.




CHAPTER V.


A few days afterwards, Ellinor's father bethought himself that same
further communication ought to take place between him and his daughter's
lover regarding the approval of the family of the latter to the young
man's engagement, and he accordingly wrote a very gentlemanly letter,
saying that of course he trusted that Ralph had informed his father of
his engagement; that Mr. Corbet was well known to Mr. Wilkins by
reputation, holding the position which he did in Shropshire, but that as
Mr. Wilkins did not pretend to be in the same station of life, Mr. Corbet
might possibly never even have heard of his name, although in his own
county it was well known as having been for generations that of the
principal conveyancer and land-agent of ---shire; that his wife had been
a member of the old knightly family of Holsters, and that he himself was
descended from a younger branch of the South Wales De Wintons, or
Wilkins; that Ellinor, as his only child, would naturally inherit all his
property, but that in the meantime, of course, some settlement upon her
would be made, the nature of which might be decided nearer the time of
the marriage.

It was a very good straightforward letter and well fitted for the purpose
to which Mr. Wilkins knew it would be applied--of being forwarded to the
young man's father.  One would have thought that it was not an engagement
so disproportionate in point of station as to cause any great opposition
on that score; but, unluckily, Captain Corbet, the heir and eldest son,
had just formed a similar engagement with Lady Maria Brabant, the
daughter of one of the proudest earls in ---shire, who had always
resented Mr. Wilkins's appearance on the field as an insult to the
county, and ignored his presence at every dinner-table where they met.
Lady Maria was visiting the Corbets at the very time when Ralph's letter,
enclosing Mr. Wilkins's, reached the paternal halls, and she merely
repeated her father's opinions when Mrs. Corbet and her daughters
naturally questioned her as to who these Wilkinses were; they remembered
the name in Ralph's letters formerly; the father was some friend of Mr.
Ness's, the clergyman with whom Ralph had read; they believed Ralph used
to dine with these Wilkinses sometimes, along with Mr. Ness.

Lady Maria was a goodnatured girl, and meant no harm in repeating her
father's words; touched up, it is true, by some of the dislike she
herself felt to the intimate alliance proposed, which would make her
sister-in-law to the daughter of an "upstart attorney," "not received in
the county," "always trying to push his way into the set above him,"
"claiming connection with the De Wintons of --- Castle, who, as she well
knew, only laughed when he was spoken of, and said they were more rich in
relations than they were aware of"--"not people papa would ever like her
to know, whatever might be the family connection."

These little speeches told in a way which the girl who uttered them did
not intend they should.  Mrs. Corbet and her daughters set themselves
violently against this foolish entanglement of Ralph's; they would not
call it an engagement.  They argued, and they urged, and they pleaded,
till the squire, anxious for peace at any price, and always more under
the sway of the people who were with him, however unreasonable they might
be, than of the absent, even though these had the wisdom of Solomon or
the prudence and sagacity of his son Ralph, wrote an angry letter, saying
that, as Ralph was of age, of course he had a right to please himself,
therefore all his father could say was, that the engagement was not at
all what either he or Ralph's mother had expected or hoped; that it was a
degradation to the family just going to ally themselves with a peer of
James the First's creation; that of course Ralph must do what he liked,
but that if he married this girl he must never expect to have her
received by the Corbets of Corbet Hall as a daughter.  The squire was
rather satisfied with his production, and took it to show it to his wife;
but she did not think it was strong enough, and added a little postscript

   "DEAR RALPH,

   "Though, as second son, you are entitled to Bromley at my death, yet I
   can do much to make the estate worthless.  Hitherto, regard for you
   has prevented my taking steps as to sale of timber, &c., which would
   materially increase your sisters' portions; this just measure I shall
   infallibly take if I find you persevere in keeping to this silly
   engagement.  Your father's disapproval is always a sufficient reason
   to allege."

Ralph was annoyed at the receipt of these letters, though he only smiled
as he locked them up in his desk.

"Dear old father! how he blusters!  As to my mother, she is reasonable
when I talk to her.  Once give her a definite idea of what Ellinor's
fortune will be, and let her, if she chooses, cut down her timber--a
threat she has held over me ever since I knew what a rocking-horse was,
and which I have known to be illegal these ten years past--and she'll
come round.  I know better than they do how Reginald has run up
post-obits, and as for that vulgar high-born Lady Maria they are all so
full of, why, she is a Flanders mare to my Ellinor, and has not a silver
penny to cross herself with, besides!  I bide my time, you dear good
people!"

He did not think it necessary to reply to these letters immediately, nor
did he even allude to their contents in his to Ellinor.  Mr. Wilkins, who
had been very well satisfied with his own letter to the young man, and
had thought that it must be equally agreeable to every one, was not at
all suspicious of any disapproval, because the fact of a distinct
sanction on the part of Mr. Ralph Corbet's friends to his engagement was
not communicated to him.

As for Ellinor, she trembled all over with happiness.  Such a summer for
the blossoming of flowers and ripening of fruit had not been known for
years; it seemed to her as if bountiful loving Nature wanted to fill the
cup of Ellinor's joy to overflowing, and as if everything, animate and
inanimate, sympathised with her happiness.  Her father was well, and
apparently content.  Miss Monro was very kind.  Dixon's lameness was
quite gone off.  Only Mr. Dunster came creeping about the house, on
pretence of business, seeking out her father, and disturbing all his
leisure with his dust-coloured parchment-skinned careworn face, and
seeming to disturb the smooth current of her daily life whenever she saw
him.

Ellinor made her appearance at the Hamley assemblies, but with less
_eclat_ than either her father or her lover expected.  Her beauty and
natural grace were admired by those who could discriminate; but to the
greater number there was (what they called) "a want of style"--want of
elegance there certainly was not, for her figure was perfect, and though
she moved shyly, she moved well.  Perhaps it was not a good place for a
correct appreciation of Miss Wilkins; some of the old dowagers thought it
a piece of presumption in her to be there at all--but the Lady Holster of
the day (who remembered her husband's quarrel with Mr. Wilkins, and
looked away whenever Ellinor came near) resented this opinion.  "Miss
Wilkins is descended from Sir Frank's family, one of the oldest in the
county; the objection might have been made years ago to the father, but
as he had been received, she did not know why Miss Wilkins was to be
alluded to as out of her place."  Ellinor's greatest enjoyment in the
evening was to hear her father say, after all was over, and they were
driving home--

"Well, I thought my Nelly the prettiest girl there, and I think I know
some other people who would have said the same if they could have spoken
out."

"Thank you, papa," said Ellinor, squeezing his hand, which she held.  She
thought he alluded to the absent Ralph as the person who would have
agreed with him, had he had the opportunity of seeing her; but no, he
seldom thought much of the absent; but had been rather flattered by
seeing Lord Hildebrand take up his glass for the apparent purpose of
watching Ellinor.

"Your pearls, too, were as handsome as any in the room, child--but we
must have them re-set; the sprays are old-fashioned now.  Let me have
them to-morrow to send up to Hancock."

"Papa, please, I had rather keep them as they are--as mamma wore them."

He was touched in a minute.

"Very well, darling.  God bless you for thinking of it!"

But he ordered her a set of sapphires instead, for the next assembly.

These balls were not such as to intoxicate Ellinor with success, and make
her in love with gaiety.  Large parties came from the different country-
houses in the neighbourhood, and danced with each other.  When they had
exhausted the resources they brought with them, they had generally a few
dances to spare for friends of the same standing with whom they were most
intimate.  Ellinor came with her father, and joined an old card-playing
dowager, by way of a chaperone--the said dowager being under old business
obligations to the firm of Wilkins and Son, and apologizing to all her
acquaintances for her own weak condescension to Mr. Wilkins's foible in
wishing to introduce his daughter into society above her natural sphere.
It was upon this lady, after she had uttered some such speech as the one
I have just mentioned, that Lady Holster had come down with the pedigree
of Ellinor's mother.  But though the old dowager had drawn back a little
discomfited at my lady's reply, she was not more attentive to Ellinor in
consequence.  She allowed Mr. Wilkins to bring in his daughter and place
her on the crimson sofa beside her; spoke to her occasionally in the
interval that elapsed before the rubbers could be properly arranged in
the card-room; invited the girl to accompany her to that sober amusement,
and on Ellinor's declining, and preferring to remain with her father, the
dowager left her with a sweet smile on her plump countenance, and an
approving conscience somewhere within her portly frame, assuring her that
she had done all that could possibly have been expected from her towards
"that good Wilkins's daughter."  Ellinor stood by her father watching the
dances, and thankful for the occasional chance of a dance.  While she had
been sitting by her chaperone, Mr. Wilkins had made the tour of the room,
dropping out the little fact of his daughter's being present wherever he
thought the seed likely to bring forth the fruit of partners.  And some
came because they liked Mr. Wilkins, and some asked Ellinor because they
had done their duty dances to their own party, and might please
themselves.  So that she usually had an average of one invitation to
every three dances; and this principally towards the end of the evening.

But considering her real beauty, and the care which her father always
took about her appearance, she met with far less than her due of
admiration.  Admiration she did not care for; partners she did; and
sometimes felt mortified when she had to sit or stand quiet during all
the first part of the evening.  If it had not been for her father's
wishes she would much rather have stayed at home; but, nevertheless, she
talked even to the irresponsive old dowager, and fairly chatted to her
father when she got beside him, because she did not like him to fancy
that she was not enjoying herself.

And, indeed, she had so much happiness in the daily course of this part
of her life, that, on looking back upon it afterwards, she could not
imagine anything brighter than it had been.  The delight of receiving her
lover's letters--the anxious happiness of replying to them (always a
little bit fearful lest she should not express herself and her love in
the precisely happy medium becoming a maiden)--the father's love and
satisfaction in her--the calm prosperity of the whole household--was
delightful at the time, and, looking back upon it, it was dreamlike.

Occasionally Mr. Corbet came down to see her.  He always slept on these
occasions at Mr. Ness's; but he was at Ford Bank the greater part of the
one day between two nights that he allowed himself for the length of his
visits.  And even these short peeps were not frequently taken.  He was
working hard at law: fagging at it tooth and nail; arranging his whole
life so as best to promote the ends of his ambition; feeling a delight in
surpassing and mastering his fellows--those who started in the race at
the same time.  He read Ellinor's letters over and over again; nothing
else beside law-books.  He perceived the repressed love hidden away in
subdued expressions in her communications, with an amused pleasure at the
attempt at concealment.  He was glad that her gaieties were not more gay;
he was glad that she was not too much admired, although a little
indignant at the want of taste on the part of the ---shire gentlemen.  But
if other admirers had come prominently forward, he would have had to take
some more decided steps to assert his rights than he had hitherto done;
for he had caused Ellinor to express a wish to her father that her
engagement should not be too much talked about until nearer the time when
it would be prudent for him to marry her.  He thought that the knowledge
of this, the only imprudently hasty step he ever meant to take in his
life, might go against his character for wisdom, if the fact became known
while he was as yet only a student.  Mr. Wilkins wondered a little; but
acceded, as he always did, to any of Ellinor's requests.  Mr. Ness was a
confidant, of course, and some of Lady Maria's connections heard of it,
and forgot it again very soon; and, as it happened, no one else was
sufficiently interested in Ellinor to care to ascertain the fact.

All this time, Mr. Ralph Corbet maintained a very quietly decided
attitude towards his own family.  He was engaged to Miss Wilkins; and all
he could say was, he felt sorry that they disapproved of it.  He was not
able to marry just at present, and before the time for his marriage
arrived, he trusted that his family would take a more reasonable view of
things, and be willing to receive her as his wife with all becoming
respect or affection.  This was the substance of what he repeated in
different forms in reply to his father's angry letters.  At length, his
invariable determination made way with his father; the paternal
thunderings were subdued to a distant rumbling in the sky; and presently
the inquiry was broached as to how much fortune Miss Wilkins would have;
how much down on her marriage; what were the eventual probabilities.  Now
this was a point which Mr. Ralph Corbet himself wished to be informed
upon.  He had not thought much about it in making the engagement; he had
been too young, or too much in love.  But an only child of a wealthy
attorney ought to have something considerable; and an allowance so as to
enable the young couple to start housekeeping in a moderately good part
of town, would be an advantage to him in his profession.  So he replied
to his father, adroitly suggesting that a letter containing certain
modifications of the inquiry which had been rather roughly put in Mr.
Corbet's last, should be sent to him, in order that he might himself
ascertain from Mr. Wilkins what were Ellinor's prospects as regarded
fortune.

The desired letter came; but not in such a form that he could pass it on
to Mr. Wilkins; he preferred to make quotations, and even these
quotations were a little altered and dressed before he sent them on.  The
gist of his letter to Mr. Wilkins was this.  He stated that he hoped soon
to be in a position to offer Ellinor a home; that he anticipated a steady
progress in his profession, and consequently in his income; but that
contingencies might arise, as his father suggested, which would deprive
him of the power of earning a livelihood, perhaps when it might be more
required than it would be at first; that it was true that, after his
mother's death a small estate in Shropshire would come to him as second
son, and of course Ellinor would receive the benefit of this property,
secured to her legally as Mr. Wilkins thought best--that being a matter
for after discussion--but that at present his father was anxious, as
might be seen from the extract to ascertain whether Mr. Wilkins could
secure him from the contingency of having his son's widow and possible
children thrown upon his hands, by giving Ellinor a dowry; and if so, it
was gently insinuated, what would be the amount of the same.

When Mr. Wilkins received this letter it startled him out of a happy day-
dream.  He liked Ralph Corbet and the whole connection quite well enough
to give his consent to an engagement; and sometimes even he was glad to
think that Ellinor's future was assured, and that she would have a
protector and friends after he was dead and gone.  But he did not want
them to assume their responsibilities so soon.  He had not distinctly
contemplated her marriage as an event likely to happen before his death.
He could not understand how his own life would go on without her: or
indeed why she and Ralph Corbet could not continue just as they were at
present.  He came down to breakfast with the letter in his hand.  By
Ellinor's blushes, as she glanced at the handwriting, he knew that she
had heard from her lover by the same post; by her tender
caresses--caresses given as if to make up for the pain which the prospect
of her leaving him was sure to cause him--he was certain that she was
aware of the contents of the letter.  Yet he put it in his pocket, and
tried to forget it.

He did this not merely from his reluctance to complete any arrangements
which might facilitate Ellinor's marriage.  There was a further annoyance
connected with the affair.  His money matters had been for some time in
an involved state; he had been living beyond his income, even reckoning
that, as he always did, at the highest point which it ever touched.  He
kept no regular accounts, reasoning with himself--or, perhaps, I should
rather say persuading himself--that there was no great occasion for
regular accounts, when he had a steady income arising from his
profession, as well as the interest of a good sum of money left him by
his father; and when, living in his own house near a country town where
provisions were cheap, his expenditure for his small family--only one
child--could never amount to anything like his incomings from the above-
mentioned sources.  But servants and horses, and choice wines and rare
fruit-trees, and a habit of purchasing any book or engraving that may
take the fancy, irrespective of the price, run away with money, even
though there be but one child.  A year or two ago, Mr. Wilkins had been
startled into a system of exaggerated retrenchment--retrenchment which
only lasted about six weeks--by the sudden bursting of a bubble
speculation in which he had invested a part of his father's savings.  But
as soon as the change in his habits, necessitated by his new economies,
became irksome, he had comforted himself for his relapse into his former
easy extravagance of living by remembering the fact that Ellinor was
engaged to the son of a man of large property: and that though Ralph was
only the second son, yet his mother's estate must come to him, as Mr.
Ness had already mentioned, on first hearing of her engagement.

Mr. Wilkins did not doubt that he could easily make Ellinor a fitting
allowance, or even pay down a requisite dowry; but the doing so would
involve an examination into the real state of his affairs, and this
involved distasteful trouble.  He had no idea how much more than mere
temporary annoyance would arise out of the investigation.  Until it was
made, he decided in his own mind that he would not speak to Ellinor on
the subject of her lover's letter.  So for the next few days she was kept
in suspense, seeing little of her father; and during the short times she
was with him she was made aware that he was nervously anxious to keep the
conversation engaged on general topics rather than on the one which she
had at heart.  As I have already said, Mr. Corbet had written to her by
the same post as that on which he sent the letter to her father, telling
her of its contents, and begging her (in all those sweet words which
lovers know how to use) to urge her father to compliance for his
sake--his, her lover's--who was pining and lonely in all the crowds of
London, since her loved presence was not there.  He did not care for
money, save as a means of hastening their marriage; indeed, if there were
only some income fixed, however small--some time for their marriage
fixed, however distant--he could be patient.  He did not want superfluity
of wealth; his habits were simple, as she well knew; and money enough
would be theirs in time, both from her share of contingencies, and the
certainty of his finally possessing Bromley.

Ellinor delayed replying to this letter until her father should have
spoken to her on the subject.  But as she perceived that he avoided all
such conversation, the young girl's heart failed her.  She began to blame
herself for wishing to leave him, to reproach herself for being accessory
to any step which made him shun being alone with her, and look distressed
and full of care as he did now.  It was the usual struggle between father
and lover for the possession of love, instead of the natural and graceful
resignation of the parent to the prescribed course of things; and, as
usual, it was the poor girl who bore the suffering for no fault of her
own: although she blamed herself for being the cause of the disturbance
in the previous order of affairs.  Ellinor had no one to speak to
confidentially but her father and her lover, and when they were at issue
she could talk openly to neither, so she brooded over Mr. Corbet's
unanswered letter, and her father's silence, and became pale and
dispirited.  Once or twice she looked up suddenly, and caught her
father's eye gazing upon her with a certain wistful anxiety; but the
instant she saw this he pulled himself up, as it were, and would begin
talking gaily about the small topics of the day.

At length Mr. Corbet grew impatient at not hearing either from Mr.
Wilkins or Ellinor, and wrote urgently to the former, making known to him
a new proposal suggested to him by his father, which was, that a certain
sum should be paid down by Mr. Wilkins to be applied, under the
management of trustees, to the improvement of the Bromley estate, out of
the profits of which, or other sources in the elder Mr. Corbet's hands, a
heavy rate of interest should be paid on this advance, which would secure
an income to the young couple immediately, and considerably increase the
value of the estate upon which Ellinor's settlement was to be made.  The
terms offered for this laying down of ready money were so advantageous,
that Mr. Wilkins was strongly tempted to accede to them at once; as
Ellinor's pale cheek and want of appetite had only that very morning
smote upon his conscience, and this immediate transfer of ready money was
as a sacrifice, a soothing balm to his self-reproach, and laziness and
dislike to immediate unpleasantness of action had its counterbalancing
weakness in imprudence.  Mr. Wilkins made some rough calculations on a
piece of paper--deeds, and all such tests of accuracy, being down at the
office; discovered that he could pay down the sum required; wrote a
letter agreeing to the proposal, and before he sealed it called Ellinor
into his study, and bade her read what he had been writing and tell him
what she thought of it.  He watched the colour come rushing into her
white face, her lips quiver and tremble, and even before the letter was
ended she was in his arms kissing him, and thanking him with blushing
caresses rather than words.

"There, there!" said he, smiling and sighing; "that will do.  Why, I do
believe you took me for a hard-hearted father, just like a heroine's
father in a book.  You've looked as woe-begone this week past as Ophelia.
One can't make up one's mind in a day about such sums of money as this,
little woman; and you should have let your old father have time to
consider."

"Oh, papa; I was only afraid you were angry."

"Well, if I was a bit perplexed, seeing you look so ill and pining was
not the way to bring me round.  Old Corbet, I must say, is trying to make
a good bargain for his son.  It is well for me that I have never been an
extravagant man."

"But, papa, we don't want all this much."

"Yes, yes! it is all right.  You shall go into their family as a well-
portioned girl, if you can't go as a Lady Maria.  Come, don't trouble
your little head any more about it.  Give me one more kiss, and then
we'll go and order the horses, and have a ride together, by way of
keeping holiday.  I deserve a holiday, don't I, Nelly?"

Some country people at work at the roadside, as the father and daughter
passed along, stopped to admire their bright happy looks, and one spoke
of the hereditary handsomeness of the Wilkins family (for the old man,
the present Mr. Wilkins's father, had been fine-looking in his drab
breeches and gaiters, and usual assumption of a yeoman's dress).  Another
said it was easy for the rich to be handsome; they had always plenty to
eat, and could ride when they were tired of walking, and had no care for
the morrow to keep them from sleeping at nights.  And, in sad
acquiescence with their contrasted lot, the men went on with their
hedging and ditching in silence.

And yet, if they had known--if the poor did know--the troubles and
temptations of the rich; if those men had foreseen the lot darkening over
the father, and including the daughter in its cloud; if Mr. Wilkins
himself had even imagined such a future possible . . . Well, there was
truth in the old heathen saying, "Let no man be envied till his death."

Ellinor had no more rides with her father; no, not ever again; though
they had stopped that afternoon at the summit of a breezy common, and
looked at a ruined hall, not so very far off; and discussed whether they
could reach it that day, and decided that it was too far away for
anything but a hurried inspection, and that some day soon they would make
the old place into the principal object of an excursion.  But a rainy
time came on, when no rides were possible; and whether it was the
influence of the weather, or some other care or trouble that oppressed
him, Mr. Wilkins seemed to lose all wish for much active exercise, and
rather sought a stimulus to his spirits and circulation in wine.  But of
this Ellinor was innocently unaware.  He seemed dull and weary, and sat
long, drowsing and drinking after dinner.  If the servants had not been
so fond of him for much previous generosity and kindness, they would have
complained now, and with reason, of his irritability, for all sorts of
things seemed to annoy him.

"You should get the master to take a ride with you, miss," said Dixon,
one day as he was putting Ellinor on her horse.  "He's not looking well,
he's studying too much at the office."

But when Ellinor named it to her father, he rather hastily replied that
it was all very well for women to ride out whenever they liked--men had
something else to do; and then, as he saw her look grave and puzzled, he
softened down his abrupt saying by adding that Dunster had been making a
fuss about his partner's non-attendance, and altogether taking a good
deal upon himself in a very offensive way, so that he thought it better
to go pretty regularly to the office, in order to show him who was
master--senior partner, and head of the business, at any rate.

Ellinor sighed a little over her disappointment at her father's
preoccupation, and then forgot her own little regret in anger at Mr.
Dunster, who had seemed all along to be a thorn in her father's side, and
had latterly gained some power and authority over him, the exercise of
which, Ellinor could not help thinking, was a very impertinent line of
conduct from a junior partner, so lately only a paid clerk, to his
superior.  There was a sense of something wrong in the Ford Bank
household for many weeks about this time.  Mr. Wilkins was not like
himself, and his cheerful ways and careless genial speeches were missed,
even on the days when he was not irritable, and evidently uneasy with
himself and all about him.  The spring was late in coming, and cold rain
and sleet made any kind of out-door exercise a trouble and discomfort
rather than a bright natural event in the course of the day.  All sound
of winter gaieties, of assemblies and meets, and jovial dinners, had died
away, and the summer pleasures were as yet unthought of.  Still Ellinor
had a secret perennial source of sunshine in her heart; whenever she
thought of Ralph she could not feel much oppression from the present
unspoken and indistinct gloom.  He loved her; and oh, how she loved him!
and perhaps this very next autumn--but that depended on his own success
in his profession.  After all, if it was not this autumn it would be the
next; and with the letters that she received weekly, and the occasional
visits that her lover ran down to Hamley to pay Mr. Ness, Ellinor felt as
if she would almost prefer the delay of the time when she must leave her
father's for a husband's roof.




CHAPTER VI.


At Easter--just when the heavens and earth were looking their dreariest,
for Easter fell very early this year--Mr. Corbet came down.  Mr. Wilkins
was too busy to see much of him; they were together even less than usual,
although not less friendly when they did meet.  But to Ellinor the visit
was one of unmixed happiness.  Hitherto she had always had a little fear
mingled up with her love of Mr. Corbet; but his manners were softened,
his opinions less decided and abrupt, and his whole treatment of her
showed such tenderness, that the young girl basked and revelled in it.
One or two of their conversations had reference to their future married
life in London; and she then perceived, although it did not jar against
her, that her lover had not forgotten his ambition in his love.  He tried
to inoculate her with something of his own craving for success in life;
but it was all in vain: she nestled to him, and told him she did not care
to be the Lord Chancellor's wife--wigs and wool-sacks were not in her
line; only if he wished it, she would wish it.

The last two days of his stay the weather changed.  Sudden heat burst
forth, as it does occasionally for a few hours even in our chilly English
spring.  The grey-brown bushes and trees started almost with visible
progress into the tender green shade which is the forerunner of the
bursting leaves.  The sky was of full cloudless blue.  Mr. Wilkins was to
come home pretty early from the office to ride out with his daughter and
her lover; but, after waiting some time for him, it grew too late, and
they were obliged to give up the project.  Nothing would serve Ellinor,
then, but that she must carry out a table and have tea in the garden, on
the sunny side of the tree, among the roots of which she used to play
when a child.  Miss Monro objected a little to this caprice of Ellinor's,
saying that it was too early for out-of-door meals; but Mr. Corbet
overruled all objections, and helped her in her gay preparations.  She
always kept to the early hours of her childhood, although she, as then,
regularly sat with her father at his late dinner; and this meal _al
fresco_ was to be a reality to her and Miss Monro.  There was a place
arranged for her father, and she seized upon him as he was coming from
the stable-yard, by the shrubbery path, to his study, and with merry
playfulness made him a prisoner, accusing him of disappointing them of
their ride, and drawing him more than half unwilling, to his chair by the
table.  But he was silent, and almost sad: his presence damped them all;
they could hardly tell why, for he did not object to anything, though he
seemed to enjoy nothing, and only to force a smile at Ellinor's
occasional sallies.  These became more and more rare as she perceived her
father's depression.  She watched him anxiously.  He perceived it, and
said--shivering in that strange unaccountable manner which is popularly
explained by the expression that some one is passing over the earth that
will one day form your grave--"Ellinor! this is not a day for out-of-door
tea.  I never felt so chilly a spot in my life.  I cannot keep from
shaking where I sit.  I must leave this place, my dear, in spite of all
your good tea."

"Oh, papa!  I am so sorry.  But look how full that hot sun's rays come on
this turf.  I thought I had chosen such a capital spot!"

But he got up and persisted in leaving the table, although he was
evidently sorry to spoil the little party.  He walked up and down the
gravel walk, close by them, talking to them as he kept passing by and
trying to cheer them up.

"Are you warmer now, papa?" asked Ellinor.

"Oh, yes!  All right.  It's only that place that seems so chilly and
damp.  I'm as warm as a toast now."

The next morning Mr. Corbet left them.  The unseasonably fine weather
passed away too, and all things went back to their rather grey and dreary
aspect; but Ellinor was too happy to feel this much, knowing what absent
love existed for her alone, and from this knowledge unconsciously
trusting in the sun behind the clouds.

I have said that few or none in the immediate neighbourhood of Hamley,
beside their own household and Mr. Ness, knew of Ellinor's engagement.  At
one of the rare dinner-parties to which she accompanied her father--it
was at the old lady's house who chaperoned her to the assemblies--she was
taken in to dinner by a young clergyman staying in the neighbourhood.  He
had just had a small living given to him in his own county, and he felt
as if this was a great step in his life.  He was good, innocent, and
rather boyish in appearance.  Ellinor was happy and at her ease, and
chatted away to this Mr. Livingstone on many little points of interest
which they found they had in common: church music, and the difficulty
they had in getting people to sing in parts; Salisbury Cathedral, which
they had both seen; styles of church architecture, Ruskin's works, and
parish schools, in which Mr. Livingstone was somewhat shocked to find
that Ellinor took no great interest.  When the gentleman came in from the
dining-room, it struck Ellinor, for the first time in her life, that her
father had taken more wine than was good for him.  Indeed, this had
rather become a habit with him of late; but as he always tried to go
quietly off to his own room when such had been the case, his daughter had
never been aware of it before, and the perception of it now made her
cheeks hot with shame.  She thought that everyone must be as conscious of
his altered manner and way of speaking as she was, and after a pause of
sick silence, during which she could not say a word, she set to and
talked to Mr. Livingstone about parish schools, anything, with redoubled
vigour and apparent interest, in order to keep one or two of the company,
at least, from noticing what was to her so painfully obvious.

The effect of her behaviour was far more than she had intended.  She kept
Mr. Livingstone, it is true, from observing her father, but she also
riveted his attention on herself.  He had thought her very pretty and
agreeable during dinner: but after dinner he considered her bewitching,
irresistible.  He dreamed of her all night, and wakened up the next
morning to a calculation of how far his income would allow him to furnish
his pretty new parsonage with that crowning blessing, a wife.  For a day
or two he did up little sums, and sighed, and thought of Ellinor, her
face listening with admiring interest to his sermons, her arm passed into
his as they went together round the parish; her sweet voice instructing
classes in his schools--turn where he would, in his imagination Ellinor's
presence rose up before him.

The consequence was that he wrote an offer, which he found a far more
perplexing piece of composition than a sermon; a real hearty expression
of love, going on, over all obstacles, to a straightforward explanation
of his present prospects and future hopes, and winding up with the
information that on the succeeding morning he would call to know whether
he might speak to Mr. Wilkins on the subject of this letter.  It was
given to Ellinor in the evening, as she was sitting with Miss Monro in
the library.  Mr. Wilkins was dining out, she hardly knew where, as it
was a sudden engagement, of which he had sent word from the office--a
gentleman's dinner-party, she supposed, as he had dressed in Hamley
without coming home.  Ellinor turned over the letter when it was brought
to her, as some people do when they cannot recognise the handwriting, as
if to discover from paper or seal what two moments would assure them of,
if they opened the letter and looked at the signature.  Ellinor could not
guess who had written it by any outward sign; but the moment she saw the
name "Herbert Livingstone," the meaning of the letter flashed upon her
and she coloured all over.  She put the letter away, unread, for a few
minutes, and then made some excuse for leaving the room and going
upstairs.  When safe in her bed-chamber, she read the young man's eager
words with a sense of self-reproach.  How must she, engaged to one man,
have been behaving to another, if this was the result of a single
evening's interview?  The self-reproach was unjustly bestowed; but with
that we have nothing to do.  She made herself very miserable; and at last
went down with a heavy heart to go on with Dante, and rummage up words in
the dictionary.  All the time she seemed to Miss Monro to be plodding on
with her Italian more diligently and sedately than usual, she was
planning in her own mind to speak to her father as soon as he returned
(and he had said that he should not be late), and beg him to undo the
mischief she had done by seeing Mr. Livingstone the next morning, and
frankly explaining the real state of affairs to him.  But she wanted to
read her letter again, and think it all over in peace; and so, at an
early hour, she wished Miss Monro good-night, and went up into her own
room above the drawing-room, and overlooking the flower-garden and
shrubbery-path to the stable-yard, by which her father was sure to
return.  She went upstairs and studied her letter well, and tried to
recall all her speeches and conduct on that miserable evening--as she
thought it then--not knowing what true misery was.  Her head ached, and
she put out the candle, and went and sat on the window-seat, looking out
into the moonlit garden, watching for her father.  She opened the window;
partly to cool her forehead, partly to enable her to call down softly
when she should see him coming along.  By-and-by the door from the stable-
yard into the shrubbery clicked and opened, and in a moment she saw Mr.
Wilkins moving through the bushes; but not alone, Mr. Dunster was with
him, and the two were talking together in rather excited tones,
immediately lost to hearing, however, as they entered Mr. Wilkins's study
by the outer door.

"They have been dining together somewhere.  Probably at Mr. Hanbury's"
(the Hamley brewer), thought Ellinor.  "But how provoking that he should
have come home with papa this night of all nights!"

Two or three times before Mr. Dunster had called on Mr. Wilkins in the
evening, as Ellinor knew; but she was not quite aware of the reason for
such late visits, and had never put together the two facts--(as cause and
consequence)--that on such occasions her father had been absent from the
office all day, and that there might be necessary business for him to
transact, the urgency of which was the motive for Mr. Dunster's visits.
Mr. Wilkins always seemed to be annoyed by his coming at so late an hour,
and spoke of it, resenting the intrusion upon his leisure; and Ellinor,
without consideration, adopted her father's mode of speaking and thinking
on the subject, and was rather more angry than he was whenever the
obnoxious partner came on business in the evening.  This night was, of
all nights, the most ill-purposed time (so Ellinor thought) for a _tete-a-
tete_ with her father!  However, there was no doubt in her mind as to
what she had to do.  So late as it was, the unwelcome visitor could not
stop long; and then she would go down and have her little confidence with
her father, and beg him to see Mr. Livingstone when he came next morning,
and dismiss him as gently as might be.

She sat on in the window-seat; dreaming waking dreams of future
happiness.  She kept losing herself in such thoughts, and became almost
afraid of forgetting why she sat there.  Presently she felt cold, and got
up to fetch a shawl, in which she muffled herself and resumed her place.
It seemed to her growing very late; the moonlight was coming fuller and
fuller into the garden and the blackness of the shadow was more
concentrated and stronger.  Surely Mr. Dunster could not have gone away
along the dark shrubbery-path so noiselessly but what she must have heard
him?  No! there was the swell of voices coming up through the window from
her father's study: angry voices they were; and her anger rose
sympathetically, as she knew that her father was being irritated.  There
was a sudden movement, as of chairs pushed hastily aside, and then a
mysterious unaccountable noise--heavy, sudden; and then a slight movement
as of chairs again; and then a profound stillness.  Ellinor leaned her
head against the side of the window to listen more intently, for some
mysterious instinct made her sick and faint.  No sound--no noise.  Only
by-and-by she heard, what we have all heard at such times of intent
listening, the beating of the pulses of her heart, and then the whirling
rush of blood through her head.  How long did this last?  She never knew.
By-and-by she heard her father's hurried footstep in his bedroom, next to
hers; but when she ran thither to speak to him, and ask him what was
amiss--if anything had been--if she might come to him now about Mr.
Livingstone's letter, she found that he had gone down again to his study,
and almost at the same moment she heard the little private outer door of
that room open; some one went out, and then there were hurried footsteps
along the shrubbery-path.  She thought, of course, that it was Mr.
Dunster leaving the house; and went back for Mr. Livingstone's letter.
Having found it, she passed through her father's room to the private
staircase, thinking that if she went by the more regular way, she would
have run the risk of disturbing Miss Monro, and perhaps of being
questioned in the morning.  Even in passing down this remote staircase,
she trod softly for fear of being overheard.  When she entered the room,
the full light of the candles dazzled her for an instant, coming out of
the darkness.  They were flaring wildly in the draught that came in
through the open door, by which the outer air was admitted; for a moment
there seemed no one in the room, and then she saw, with strange sick
horror, the legs of some one lying on the carpet behind the table.  As if
compelled, even while she shrank from doing it, she went round to see who
it was that lay there, so still and motionless as never to stir at her
sudden coming.  It was Mr. Dunster; his head propped on chair-cushions,
his eyes open, staring, distended.  There was a strong smell of brandy
and hartshorn in the room; a smell so powerful as not to be neutralized
by the free current of night air that blew through the two open doors.
Ellinor could not have told whether it was reason or instinct that made
her act as she did during this awful night.  In thinking of it
afterwards, with shuddering avoidance of the haunting memory that would
come and overshadow her during many, many years of her life, she grew to
believe that the powerful smell of the spilt brandy absolutely
intoxicated her--an unconscious Rechabite in practice.  But something
gave her a presence of mind and a courage not her own.  And though she
learnt to think afterwards that she had acted unwisely, if not wrongly
and wickedly, yet she marvelled, in recalling that time, how she could
have then behaved as she did.  First of all she lifted herself up from
her fascinated gaze at the dead man, and went to the staircase door, by
which she had entered the study, and shut it softly.  Then she went
back--looked again; took the brandy-bottle, and knelt down, and tried to
pour some into the mouth; but this she found she could not do.  Then she
wetted her handkerchief with the spirit, and moistened the lips; all to
no purpose; for, as I have said before, the man was dead--killed by
rupture of a vessel of the brain; how occasioned I must tell by-and-by.
Of course, all Ellinor's little cares and efforts produced no effect; her
father had tried them before--vain endeavours all, to bring back the
precious breath of life!  The poor girl could not bear the look of those
open eyes, and softly, tenderly, tried to close them, although
unconscious that in so doing she was rendering the pious offices of some
beloved hand to a dead man.  She was sitting by the body on the floor
when she heard steps coming with rushing and yet cautious tread, through
the shrubbery; she had no fear, although it might be the tread of robbers
and murderers.  The awfulness of the hour raised her above common fears;
though she did not go through the usual process of reasoning, and by it
feel assured that the feet which were coming so softly and swiftly along
were the same which she had heard leaving the room in like manner only a
quarter of an hour before.

Her father entered, and started back, almost upsetting some one behind
him by his recoil, on seeing his daughter in her motionless attitude by
the dead man.

"My God, Ellinor! what has brought you here?" he said, almost fiercely.

But she answered as one stupefied, "I don't know.  Is he dead?"

"Hush, hush, child; it cannot be helped."

She raised her eyes to the solemn, pitying, awe-stricken face behind her
father's--the countenance of Dixon.

"Is he dead?" she asked of him.

The man stepped forwards, respectfully pushing his master on one side as
he did so.  He bent down over the corpse, and looked, and listened and
then reaching a candle off the table, he signed Mr. Wilkins to close the
door.  And Mr. Wilkins obeyed, and looked with an intensity of eagerness
almost amounting to faintness on the experiment, and yet he could not
hope.  The flame was steady--steady and pitilessly unstirred, even when
it was adjusted close to mouth and nostril; the head was raised up by one
of Dixon's stalwart arms, while he held the candle in the other hand.
Ellinor fancied that there was some trembling on Dixon's part, and
grasped his wrist tightly in order to give it the requisite motionless
firmness.

All in vain.  The head was placed again on the cushions, the servant rose
and stood by his master, looked sadly on the dead man, whom, living, none
of them had liked or cared for, and Ellinor sat on, quiet and tearless,
as one in a trance.

"How was it, father?" at length she asked.

He would fain have had her ignorant of all, but so questioned by her
lips, so adjured by her eyes in the very presence of death, he could not
choose but speak the truth; he spoke it in convulsive gasps, each
sentence an effort:

"He taunted me--he was insolent, beyond my patience--I could not bear it.
I struck him--I can't tell how it was.  He must have hit his head in
falling.  Oh, my God! one little hour a go I was innocent of this man's
blood!"  He covered his face with his hands.

Ellinor took the candle again; kneeling behind Mr. Dunster's head, she
tried the futile experiment once more.

"Could not a doctor do some good?" she asked of Dixon, in a hopeless
voice.

"No!" said he, shaking his head, and looking with a sidelong glance at
his master, who seemed to shrivel up and to shrink away at the bare
suggestion.  "Doctors can do nought, I'm afeard.  All that a doctor could
do, I take it, would be to open a vein, and that I could do along with
the best of them, if I had but my fleam here."  He fumbled in his pockets
as he spoke, and, as chance would it, the "fleam" (or cattle lancet) was
somewhere about his dress.  He drew it out, smoothed and tried it on his
finger.  Ellinor tried to bare the arm, but turned sick as she did so.
Her father started eagerly forwards, and did what was necessary with
hurried trembling hands.  If they had cared less about the result, they
might have been more afraid of the consequences of the operation in the
hands of one so ignorant as Dixon.  But, vein or artery, it signified
little; no living blood gushed out; only a little watery moisture
followed the cut of the fleam.  They laid him back on his strange sad
death-couch.  Dixon spoke next.

"Master Ned!" said he--for he had known Mr. Wilkins in his days of bright
careless boyhood, and almost was carried back to them by the sense of
charge and protection which the servant's presence of mind and sharpened
senses gave him over his master on this dreary night--"Master Ned! we
must do summut."

No one spoke.  What was to be done?

"Did any folk see him come here?" Dixon asked, after a time.  Ellinor
looked up to hear her father's answer, a wild hope coming into her mind
that all might be concealed somehow; she did not know how, nor did she
think of any consequences except saving her father from the vague dread,
trouble, and punishment that she was aware would await him if all were
known.

Mr. Wilkins did not seem to hear; in fact, he did not hear anything but
the unspoken echo of his own last words, that went booming through his
heart: "An hour ago I was innocent of this man's blood!  Only an hour
ago!"

Dixon got up and poured out half a tumblerful of raw spirit from the
brandy-bottle that stood on the table.

"Drink this, Master Ned!" putting it to his master's lips.  "Nay"--to
Ellinor--"it will do him no harm; only bring back his senses, which, poor
gentleman, are scared away.  We shall need all our wits.  Now, sir,
please answer my question.  Did anyone see Measter Dunster come here?"

"I don't know," said Mr. Wilkins, recovering his speech.  "It all seems
in a mist.  He offered to walk home with me; I did not want him.  I was
almost rude to him to keep him off.  I did not want to talk of business;
I had taken too much wine to be very clear and some things at the office
were not quite in order, and he had found it out.  If anyone heard our
conversation, they must know I did not want him to come with me.  Oh! why
would he come?  He was as obstinate--he would come--and here it has been
his death!"

"Well, sir, what's done can't be undone, and I'm sure we'd any of us
bring him back to life if we could, even by cutting off our hands, though
he was a mighty plaguey chap while he'd breath in him.  But what I'm
thinking is this: it'll maybe go awkward with you, sir, if he's found
here.  One can't say.  But don't you think, miss, as he's neither kith
nor kin to miss him, we might just bury him away before morning,
somewhere?  There's better nor four hours of dark.  I wish we could put
him i' the churchyard, but that can't be; but, to my mind, the sooner we
set about digging a place for him to lie in, poor fellow, the better
it'll be for us all in the end.  I can pare a piece of turf up where
it'll never be missed, and if master'll take one spade, and I another,
why we'll lay him softly down, and cover him up, and no one'll be the
wiser."

There was no reply from either for a minute or so.  Then Mr. Wilkins
said:

"If my father could have known of my living to this!  Why, they will try
me as a criminal; and you, Ellinor?  Dixon, you are right.  We must
conceal it, or I must cut my throat, for I never could live through it.
One minute of passion, and my life blasted!"

"Come along, sir," said Dixon; "there's no time to lose."  And they went
out in search of tools; Ellinor following them, shivering all over, but
begging that she might be with them, and not have to remain in the study
with--

She would not be bidden into her own room; she dreaded inaction and
solitude.  She made herself busy with carrying heavy baskets of turf, and
straining her strength to the utmost; fetching all that was wanted, with
soft swift steps.

Once, as she passed near the open study door, she thought that she heard
a rustling, and a flash of hope came across her.  Could he be reviving?
She entered, but a moment was enough to undeceive her; it had only been a
night rustle among the trees.  Of hope, life, there was none.

They dug the hole deep and well; working with fierce energy to quench
thought and remorse.  Once or twice her father asked for brandy, which
Ellinor, reassured by the apparently good effect of the first dose,
brought to him without a word; and once at her father's suggestion she
brought food, such as she could find in the dining-room without
disturbing the household, for Dixon.

When all was ready for the reception of the body in its unblessed grave,
Mr. Wilkins bade Ellinor go up to her own room--she had done all she
could to help them; the rest must be done by them alone.  She felt that
it must; and indeed both her nerves and her bodily strength were giving
way.  She would have kissed her father, as he sat wearily at the head of
the grave--Dixon had gone in to make some arrangement for carrying the
corpse--but he pushed her away quietly, but resolutely--

"No, Nelly, you must never kiss me again; I am a murderer."

"But I will, my own darling papa," said she, throwing her arms
passionately round his neck, and covering his face with kisses.  "I love
you, and I don't care what you are, if you were twenty times a murderer,
which you are not; I am sure it was only an accident."

"Go in, my child, go in, and try to get some rest.  But go in, for we
must finish as fast as we can.  The moon is down; it will soon be
daylight.  What a blessing there are no rooms on one side of the house.
Go, Nelly."  And she went; straining herself up to move noiselessly, with
eyes averted, through the room which she shuddered at as the place of
hasty and unhallowed death.

Once in her own room she bolted the door on the inside, and then stole to
the window, as if some fascination impelled her to watch all the
proceedings to the end.  But her aching eyes could hardly penetrate
through the thick darkness, which, at the time of the year of which I am
speaking, so closely precedes the dawn.  She could discern the tops of
the trees against the sky, and could single out the well-known one, at a
little distance from the stem of which the grave was made, in the very
piece of turf over which so lately she and Ralph had had their merry
little tea-making; and where her father, as she now remembered, had
shuddered and shivered, as if the ground on which his seat had then been
placed was fateful and ominous to him.

Those below moved softly and quietly in all they did; but every sound had
a significant and terrible interpretation to Ellinor's ears.  Before they
had ended, the little birds had begun to pipe out their gay _reveillee_
to the dawn.  Then doors closed, and all was profoundly still.

Ellinor threw herself, in her clothes, on the bed; and was thankful for
the intense weary physical pain which took off something of the anguish
of thought--anguish that she fancied from time to time was leading to
insanity.

By-and-by the morning cold made her instinctively creep between the
blankets; and, once there, she fell into a dead heavy sleep.




CHAPTER VII.


Ellinor was awakened by a rapping at her door: it was her maid.

She was fully aroused in a moment, for she had fallen asleep with one
clearly defined plan in her mind, only one, for all thoughts and cares
having no relation to the terrible event were as though they had never
been.  All her purpose was to shield her father from suspicion.  And to
do this she must control herself--heart, mind, and body must be ruled to
this one end.

So she said to Mason:

"Let me lie half an hour longer; and beg Miss Monro not to wait breakfast
for me; but in half an hour bring me up a cup of strong tea, for I have a
bad headache."

Mason went away.  Ellinor sprang up; rapidly undressed herself, and got
into bed again, so that when her maid returned with her breakfast, there
was no appearance of the night having been passed in any unusual manner.

"How ill you do look, miss!" said Mason.  "I am sure you had better not
get up yet."

Ellinor longed to ask if her father had yet shown himself; but this
question--so natural at any other time--seemed to her so suspicious under
the circumstances, that she could not bring her lips to frame it.  At any
rate, she must get up and struggle to make the day like all other days.
So she rose, confessing that she did not feel very well, but trying to
make light of it, and when she could think of anything but the one awe,
to say a trivial sentence or two.  But she could not recollect how she
behaved in general, for her life hitherto had been simple, and led
without any consciousness of effect.

Before she was dressed, a message came up to say that Mr. Livingstone was
in the drawing-room.

Mr. Livingstone!  He belonged to the old life of yesterday!  The billows
of the night had swept over his mark on the sands of her memory; and it
was only by a strong effort that she could remember who he was--what he
wanted.  She sent Mason down to inquire from the servant who admitted him
whom it was that he had asked for.

"He asked for master first.  But master has not rung for his water yet,
so James told him he was not up.  Then he took thought for a while, and
asked could he speak to you, he would wait if you were not at liberty but
that he wished particular to see either master, or you.  So James asked
him to sit down in the drawing-room, and he would let you know."

"I must go," thought Ellinor.  "I will send him away directly; to come,
thinking of marriage to a house like this--to-day, too!"

And she went down hastily, and in a hard unsparing mood towards a man,
whose affection for her she thought was like a gourd, grown up in a
night, and of no account, but as a piece of foolish, boyish excitement.

She never thought of her own appearance--she had dressed without looking
in the glass.  Her only object was to dismiss her would-be suitor as
speedily as possible.  All feelings of shyness, awkwardness, or maiden
modesty, were quenched and overcome.  In she went.

He was standing by the mantelpiece as she entered.  He made a step or two
forward to meet her; and then stopped, petrified, as it were, at the
sight of her hard white face.

"Miss Wilkins, I am afraid you are ill!  I have come too early.  But I
have to leave Hamley in half an hour, and I thought--Oh, Miss Wilkins!
what have I done?"

For she sank into the chair nearest to her, as if overcome by his words;
but, indeed, it was by the oppression of her own thoughts: she was hardly
conscious of his presence.

He came a step or two nearer, as if he longed to take her in his arms and
comfort and shelter her; but she stiffened herself and arose, and by an
effort walked towards the fireplace, and there stood, as if awaiting what
he would say next.  But he was overwhelmed by her aspect of illness.  He
almost forgot his own wishes, his own suit, in his desire to relieve her
from the pain, physical as he believed it, under which she was suffering.
It was she who had to begin the subject.

"I received your letter yesterday, Mr. Livingstone.  I was anxious to see
you to-day, in order that I might prevent you from speaking to my father.
I do not say anything of the kind of affection you can feel for me--me,
whom you have only seen once.  All I shall say is, that the sooner we
both forget what I must call folly, the better."

She took the airs of a woman considerably older and more experienced than
himself.  He thought her haughty; she was only miserable.

"You are mistaken," said he, more quietly and with more dignity than was
likely from his previous conduct.  "I will not allow you to characterise
as folly what might be presumptuous on my part--I had no business to
express myself so soon--but which in its foundation was true and sincere.
That I can answer for most solemnly.  It is possible, though it may not
be a usual thing, for a man to feel so strongly attracted by the charms
and qualities of a woman, even at first sight, as to feel sure that she,
and she alone, can make his happiness.  My folly consisted--there you are
right--in even dreaming that you could return my feelings in the
slightest degree, when you had only seen me once: and I am most truly
ashamed of myself.  I cannot tell you how sorry I am, when I see how you
have compelled yourself to come and speak to me when you are so ill."

She staggered into a chair, for with all her wish for his speedy
dismissal, she was obliged to be seated.  His hand was upon the bell.

"No, don't!" she said.  "Wait a minute."

His eyes, bent upon her with a look of deep anxiety, touched her at that
moment, and she was on the point of shedding tears; but she checked
herself, and rose again.

"I will go," said he.  "It is the kindest thing I can do.  Only, may I
write?  May I venture to write and urge what I have to say more
coherently?"

"No!" said she.  "Don't write.  I have given you my answer.  We are
nothing, and can be nothing to each other.  I am engaged to be married.  I
should not have told you if you had not been so kind.  Thank you.  But go
now."

The poor young man's face fell, and he became almost as white as she was
for the instant.  After a moment's reflection, he took her hand in his,
and said:

"May God bless you, and him too, whoever he be!  But if you want a
friend, I may be that friend, may I not? and try to prove that my words
of regard were true, in a better and higher sense than I used them at
first."  And kissing her passive hand, he was gone and she was left
sitting alone.

But solitude was not what she could bear.  She went quickly upstairs, and
took a strong dose of sal-volatile, even while she heard Miss Monro
calling to her.

"My dear, who was that gentleman that has been closeted with you in the
drawing-room all this time?"

And then, without listening to Ellinor's reply, she went on:

"Mrs. Jackson has been here" (it was at Mrs. Jackson's house that Mr.
Dunster lodged), "wanting to know if we could tell her where Mr. Dunster
was, for he never came home last night at all.  And you were in the
drawing-room with--who did you say he was?--that Mr. Livingstone, who
might have come at a better time to bid good-bye; and he had never dined
here, had he? so I don't see any reason he had to come calling, and P. P.
C.-ing, and your papa _not_ up.  So I said to Mrs. Jackson, 'I'll send
and ask Mr. Wilkins, if you like, but I don't see any use in it, for I
can tell you just as well as anybody, that Mr. Dunster is not in this
house, wherever he may be.'  Yet nothing would satisfy her but that some
one must go and waken up your papa, and ask if he could tell where Mr.
Dunster was."

"And did papa?" inquired Ellinor, her dry throat huskily forming the
inquiry that seemed to be expected from her.

"No! to be sure not.  How should Mr. Wilkins know?  As I said to Mrs.
Jackson, 'Mr. Wilkins is not likely to know where Mr. Dunster spends his
time when he is not in the office, for they do not move in the same rank
of life, my good woman; and Mrs. Jackson apologised, but said that
yesterday they had both been dining at Mr. Hodgson's together, she
believed; and somehow she had got it into her head that Mr. Dunster might
have missed his way in coming along Moor Lane, and might have slipped
into the canal; so she just thought she would step up and ask Mr. Wilkins
if they had left Mr. Hodgson's together, or if your papa had driven home.
I asked her why she had not told me all these particulars before, for I
could have asked your papa myself all about when he last saw Mr. Dunster;
and I went up to ask him a second time, but he did not like it at all,
for he was busy dressing, and I had to shout my questions through the
door, and he could not always hear me at first."

"What did he say?"

"Oh! he had walked part of the way with Mr. Dunster, and then cut across
by the short path through the fields, as far as I could understand him
through the door.  He seemed very much annoyed to hear that Mr. Dunster
had not been at home all night; but he said I was to tell Mrs. Jackson
that he would go to the office as soon as he had had his breakfast, which
he ordered to be sent up directly into his own room, and he had no doubt
it would all turn out right, but that she had better go home at once.
And, as I told her, she might find Mr. Dunster there by the time she got
there.  There, there is your papa going out!  He has not lost any time
over his breakfast!"

Ellinor had taken up the _Hamley Examiner_, a daily paper, which lay on
the table, to hide her face in the first instance; but it served a second
purpose, as she glanced languidly over the columns of the advertisements.

"Oh! here are Colonel Macdonald's orchideous plants to be sold.  All the
stock of hothouse and stove plants at Hartwell Priory.  I must send James
over to Hartwell to attend the sale.  It is to last for three days."

"But can he be spared for so long?"

"Oh, yes; he had better stay at the little inn there, to be on the spot.
Three days," and as she spoke, she ran out to the gardener, who was
sweeping up the newly-mown grass in the front of the house.  She gave him
hasty and unlimited directions, only seeming intent--if any one had been
suspiciously watching her words and actions--to hurry him off to the
distant village, where the auction was to take place.

When he was once gone she breathed more freely.  Now, no one but the
three cognisant of the terrible reason of the disturbance of the turf
under the trees in a certain spot in the belt round the flower-garden,
would be likely to go into the place.  Miss Monro might wander round with
a book in her hand; but she never noticed anything, and was short-sighted
into the bargain.  Three days of this moist, warm, growing weather, and
the green grass would spring, just as if life--was what it had been
twenty-four hours before.

When all this was done and said, it seemed as if Ellinor's strength and
spirit sank down at once.  Her voice became feeble, her aspect wan; and
although she told Miss Monro that nothing was the matter, yet it was
impossible for any one who loved her not to perceive that she was far
from well.  The kind governess placed her pupil on the sofa, covered her
feet up warmly, darkened the room, and then stole out on tiptoe, fancying
that Ellinor would sleep.  Her eyes were, indeed, shut; but try as much
as she would to be quiet, she was up in less than five minutes after Miss
Monro had left the room, and walking up and down in all the restless
agony of body that arises from an overstrained mind.  But soon Miss Monro
reappeared, bringing with her a dose of soothing medicine of her own
concocting, for she was great in domestic quackery.  What the medicine
was Ellinor did not care to know; she drank it without any sign of her
usual merry resistance to physic of Miss Monro's ordering; and as the
latter took up a book, and showed a set purpose of remaining with her
patient, Ellinor was compelled to lie still, and presently fell asleep.

She awakened late in the afternoon with a start.  Her father was standing
over her, listening to Miss Monro's account of her indisposition.  She
only caught one glimpse of his strangely altered countenance, and hid her
head in the cushions--hid it from memory, not from him.  For in an
instant she must have conjectured the interpretation he was likely to put
upon her shrinking action, and she had turned towards him, and had thrown
her arms round his neck, and was kissing his cold, passive face.  Then
she fell back.  But all this time their sad eyes never met--they dreaded
the look of recollection that must be in each other's gaze.

"There, my dear!" said Miss Monro.  "Now you must lie still till I fetch
you a little broth.  You are better now, are not you?"

"You need not go for the broth, Miss Monro," said Mr. Wilkins, ringing
the bell.  "Fletcher can surely bring it."  He dreaded the being left
alone with his daughter--nor did she fear it less.  She heard the strange
alteration in her father's voice, hard and hoarse, as if it was an effort
to speak.  The physical signs of his suffering cut her to the heart; and
yet she wondered how it was that they could both be alive, or, if alive,
they were not rending their garments and crying aloud.  Mr. Wilkins
seemed to have lost the power of careless action and speech, it is true.
He wished to leave the room now his anxiety about his daughter was
relieved, but hardly knew how to set about it.  He was obliged to think
about the veriest trifle, in order that by an effort of reason he might
understand how he should have spoken or acted if he had been free from
blood-guiltiness.  Ellinor understood all by intuition.  But henceforward
the unspoken comprehension of each other's hidden motions made their
mutual presence a burdensome anxiety to each.  Miss Monro was a relief;
they were glad of her as a third person, unconscious of the secret which
constrained them.  This afternoon her unconsciousness gave present pain,
although on after reflection each found in her speeches a cause of
rejoicing.

"And Mr. Dunster, Mr. Wilkins, has he come home yet?"

A moment's pause, in which Mr. Wilkins pumped the words out of his husky
throat:

"I have not heard.  I have been riding.  I went on business to Mr.
Estcourt's.  Perhaps you will be so kind as to send and inquire at Mrs.
Jackson's."

Ellinor sickened at the words.  She had been all her life a truthful
plain-spoken girl.  She held herself high above deceit.  Yet, here came
the necessity for deceit--a snare spread around her.  She had not
revolted so much from the deed which brought unpremeditated death, as she
did from these words of her father's.  The night before, in her mad fever
of affright, she had fancied that to conceal the body was all that would
be required; she had not looked forward to the long, weary course of
small lies, to be done and said, involved in that one mistaken action.
Yet, while her father's words made her soul revolt, his appearance melted
her heart, as she caught it, half turned away from her, neither looking
straight at Miss Monro, nor at anything materially visible.  His hollow
sunken eye seemed to Ellinor to have a vision of the dead man before it.
His cheek was livid and worn, and its healthy colouring gained by years
of hearty out-door exercise, was all gone into the wanness of age.  His
hair, even to Ellinor, seemed greyer for the past night of wretchedness.
He stooped, and looked dreamily earthward, where formerly he had stood
erect.  It needed all the pity called forth by such observation to quench
Ellinor's passionate contempt for the course on which she and her father
were embarked, when she heard him repeat his words to the servant who
came with her broth.

"Fletcher! go to Mrs. Jackson's and inquire if Mr. Dunster is come home
yet.  I want to speak to him."

"To him!" lying dead where he had been laid; killed by the man who now
asked for his presence.  Ellinor shut her eyes, and lay back in despair.
She wished she might die, and be out of this horrible tangle of events.

Two minutes after, she was conscious of her father and Miss Monro
stealing softly out of the room.  They thought that she slept.

She sprang off the sofa and knelt down.

"Oh, God," she prayed, "Thou knowest!  Help me!  There is none other help
but Thee!"

I suppose she fainted.  For, an hour or more afterwards Miss Monro,
coming in, found her lying insensible by the side of the sofa.

She was carried to bed.  She was not delirious, she was only in a stupor,
which they feared might end in delirium.  To obviate this, her father
sent far and wide for skilful physicians, who tended her, almost at the
rate of a guinea the minute.

People said how hard it was upon Mr. Wilkins, that scarcely had that
wretch Dunster gone off, with no one knows how much out of the trusts of
the firm, before his only child fell ill.  And, to tell the truth, he
himself looked burnt and scared with affliction.  He had a startled look,
they said, as if he never could tell, after such experience, from which
side the awful proofs of the uncertainty of earth would appear, the
terrible phantoms of unforeseen dread.  Both rich and poor, town and
country, sympathised with him.  The rich cared not to press their claims,
or their business, at such a time; and only wondered, in their
superficial talk after dinner, how such a good fellow as Wilkins could
ever have been deceived by a man like Dunster.  Even Sir Frank Holster
and his lady forgot their old quarrel, and came to inquire after Ellinor,
and sent her hothouse fruit by the bushel.

Mr. Corbet behaved as an anxious lover should do.  He wrote daily to Miss
Monro to beg for the most minute bulletins; he procured everything in
town that any doctor even fancied might be of service, he came down as
soon as there was the slightest hint of permission that Ellinor might see
him.  He overpowered her with tender words and caresses, till at last she
shrank away from them, as from something too bewildering, and past all
right comprehension.

But one night before this, when all windows and doors stood open to admit
the least breath that stirred the sultry July air, a servant on velvet
tiptoe had stolen up to Ellinor's open door, and had beckoned out of the
chamber of the sleeper the ever watchful nurse, Miss Monro.

"A gentleman wants you," were all the words the housemaid dared to say so
close to the bedroom.  And softly, softly Miss Monro stepped down the
stairs, into the drawing-room; and there she saw Mr. Livingstone.  But
she did not know him; she had never seen him before.

"I have travelled all day.  I heard she was ill--was dying.  May I just
have one more look at her?  I will not speak; I will hardly breathe.  Only
let me see her once again!"

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I don't know who you are; and if you mean
Miss Wilkins, by 'her,' she is very ill, but we hope not dying.  She was
very ill, indeed, yesterday; very dangerously ill, I may say, but she is
having a good sleep, in consequence of a soporific medicine, and we are
really beginning to hope--"

But just here Miss Monro's hand was taken, and, to her infinite surprise,
was kissed before she could remember how improper such behaviour was.

"God bless you, madam, for saying so.  But if she sleeps, will you let me
see her? it can do no harm, for I will tread as if on egg shells; and I
have come so far--if I might just look on her sweet face.  Pray, madam,
let me just have one sight of her.  I will not ask for more."

But he did ask for more after he had had his wish.  He stole upstairs
after Miss Monro, who looked round reproachfully at him if even a
nightingale sang, or an owl hooted in the trees outside the open windows,
yet who paused to say herself, outside Mr. Wilkins's chamber door,

"Her father's room; he has not been in bed for six nights, till to-night;
pray do not make a noise to waken him."  And on into the deep stillness
of the hushed room, where one clear ray of hidden lamp-light shot athwart
the door, where a watcher, breathing softly, sat beside the bed--where
Ellinor's dark head lay motionless on the white pillow, her face almost
as white, her form almost as still.  You might have heard a pin fall.
After a while he moved to withdraw.  Miss Monro, jealous of every sound,
followed him, with steps all the more heavy because they were taken with
so much care, down the stairs, back into the drawing-room.  By the bed-
candle flaring in the draught, she saw that there was the glittering mark
of wet tears on his cheek; and she felt, as she said afterwards, "sorry
for the young man."  And yet she urged him to go, for she knew that she
might be wanted upstairs.  He took her hand, and wrung it hard.

"Thank you.  She looked so changed--oh! she looked as though she were
dead.  You will write--Herbert Livingstone, Langham Vicarage, Yorkshire;
you will promise me to write.  If I could do anything for her, but I can
but pray.  Oh, my darling; my darling! and I have no right to be with
her."

"Go away, there's a good young man," said Miss Monro, all the more
pressing to hurry him out by the front door, because she was afraid of
his emotion overmastering him, and making him noisy in his
demonstrations.  "Yes, I will write; I will write, never fear!" and she
bolted the door behind him, and was thankful.

Two minutes afterwards there was a low tap; she undid the fastenings, and
there he stood, pale in the moonlight.

"Please don't tell her I came to ask about her; she might not like it."

"No, no! not I!  Poor creature, she's not likely to care to hear anything
this long while.  She never roused at Mr. Corbet's name."

"Mr. Corbet's!" said Livingstone, below his breath, and he turned and
went away; this time for good.

But Ellinor recovered.  She knew she was recovering, when day after day
she felt involuntary strength and appetite return.  Her body seemed
stronger than her will; for that would have induced her to creep into her
grave, and shut her eyes for ever on this world, so full of troubles.

She lay, for the most part, with her eyes closed, very still and quiet;
but she thought with the intensity of one who seeks for lost peace, and
cannot find it.  She began to see that if in the mad impulses of that mad
nightmare of horror, they had all strengthened each other, and dared to
be frank and open, confessing a great fault, a greater disaster, a
greater woe--which in the first instance was hardly a crime--their future
course, though sad and sorrowful, would have been a simple and
straightforward one to tread.  But it was not for her to undo what was
done, and to reveal the error and shame of a father.  Only she, turning
anew to God, in the solemn and quiet watches of the night, made a
covenant, that in her conduct, her own personal individual life, she
would act loyally and truthfully.  And as for the future, and all the
terrible chances involved in it, she would leave it in His hands--if,
indeed (and here came in the Tempter), He would watch over one whose life
hereafter must seem based upon a lie.  Her only plea, offered "standing
afar off" was, "The lie is said and done and over--it was not for my own
sake.  Can filial piety be so overcome by the rights of justice and
truth, as to demand of me that I should reveal my father's guilt."

Her father's severe sharp punishment began.  He knew why she suffered,
what made her young strength falter and tremble, what made her life seem
nigh about to be quenched in death.  Yet he could not take his sorrow and
care in the natural manner.  He was obliged to think how every word and
deed would be construed.  He fancied that people were watching him with
suspicious eyes, when nothing was further from their thoughts.  For once
let the "public" of any place be possessed by an idea, it is more
difficult to dislodge it than any one imagines who has not tried.  If Mr.
Wilkins had gone into Hamley market-place, and proclaimed himself guilty
of the manslaughter of Mr. Dunster--nay, if he had detailed all the
circumstances--the people would have exclaimed, "Poor man, he is crazed
by this discovery of the unworthiness of the man he trusted so; and no
wonder--it was such a thing to have done--to have defrauded his partner
to such an extent, and then have made off to America!"

For many small circumstances, which I do not stop to detail here, went
far to prove this, as we know, unfounded supposition; and Mr. Wilkins,
who was known, from his handsome boyhood, through his comely manhood, up
to the present time, by all the people in Hamley, was an object of
sympathy and respect to every one who saw him, as he passed by, old, and
lorn, and haggard before his time, all through the evil conduct of one,
London-bred, who was as a hard, unlovely stranger to the popular mind of
this little country town.

Mr. Wilkins's own servants liked him.  The workings of his temptations
were such as they could understand.  If he had been hot-tempered he had
also been generous, or I should rather say careless and lavish with his
money.  And now that he was cheated and impoverished by his partner's
delinquency, they thought it no wonder that he drank long and deep in the
solitary evenings which he passed at home.  It was not that he was
without invitations.  Every one came forward to testify their respect for
him by asking him to their houses.  He had probably never been so
universally popular since his father's death.  But, as he said, he did
not care to go into society while his daughter was so ill--he had no
spirits for company.

But if any one had cared to observe his conduct at home, and to draw
conclusions from it, they could have noticed that, anxious as he was
about Ellinor, he rather avoided than sought her presence, now that her
consciousness and memory were restored.  Nor did she ask for, or wish for
him.  The presence of each was a burden to the other.  Oh, sad and woeful
night of May--overshadowing the coming summer months with gloom and
bitter remorse!




CHAPTER VIII.


Still youth prevailed over all.  Ellinor got well, as I have said, even
when she would fain have died.  And the afternoon came when she left her
room.  Miss Monro would gladly have made a festival of her recovery, and
have had her conveyed into the unused drawing-room.  But Ellinor begged
that she might be taken into the library--into the schoolroom--anywhere
(thought she) not looking on the side of the house on the flower-garden,
which she had felt in all her illness as a ghastly pressure lying within
sight of those very windows, through which the morning sun streamed right
upon her bed--like the accusing angel, bringing all hidden things to
light.

And when Ellinor was better still, when the Bath-chair had been sent up
for her use, by some kindly old maid, out of Hamley, she still petitioned
that it might be kept on the lawn or town side of the house, away from
the flower-garden.

One day she almost screamed, when, as she was going to the front door,
she saw Dixon standing ready to draw her, instead of Fletcher the servant
who usually went.  But she checked all demonstration of feeling; although
it was the first time she had seen him since he and she and one more had
worked their hearts out in hard bodily labour.

He looked so stern and ill!  Cross, too, which she had never seen him
before.

As soon as they were out of immediate sight of the windows, she asked him
to stop, forcing herself to speak to him.

"Dixon, you look very poorly," she said, trembling as she spoke.

"Ay!" said he.  "We didn't think much of it at the time, did we, Miss
Nelly?  But it'll be the death on us, I'm thinking.  It has aged me above
a bit.  All my fifty years afore were but as a forenoon of child's play
to that night.  Measter, too--I could a-bear a good deal, but measter
cuts through the stable-yard, and past me, wi'out a word, as if I was
poison, or a stinking foumart.  It's that as is worst, Miss Nelly, it
is."

And the poor man brushed some tears from his eyes with the back of his
withered, furrowed hand.  Ellinor caught the infection, and cried
outright, sobbed like a child, even while she held out her little white
thin hand to his grasp.  For as soon as he saw her emotion, he was
penitent for what he had said.

"Don't now--don't," was all he could think of to say.

"Dixon!" said she at length, "you must not mind it.  You must try not to
mind it.  I see he does not like to be reminded of that, even by seeing
me.  He tries never to be alone with me.  My poor old Dixon, it has
spoilt my life for me; for I don't think he loves me any more."

She sobbed as if her heart would break; and now it was Dixon's turn to be
comforter.

"Ah, dear, my blessing, he loves you above everything.  It's only he
can't a-bear the sight of us, as is but natural.  And if he doesn't fancy
being alone with you, there's always one as does, and that's a comfort at
the worst of times.  And don't ye fret about what I said a minute ago.  I
were put out because measter all but pushed me out of his way this
morning, without never a word.  But I were an old fool for telling ye.
And I've really forgotten why I told Fletcher I'd drag ye a bit about to-
day.  Th' gardener is beginning for to wonder as you don't want to see
th' annuals and bedding-out things as you were so particular about in
May.  And I thought I'd just have a word wi' ye, and then if you'd let
me, we'd go together just once round the flower-garden, just to say
you've been, you know, and to give them chaps a bit of praise.  You'll
only have to look on the beds, my pretty, and it must be done some time.
So come along!"

He began to pull resolutely in the direction of the flower-garden.
Ellinor bit her lips to keep in the cry of repugnance that rose to them.
As Dixon stopped to unlock the door, he said:

"It's not hardness, nothing like it; I've waited till I heerd you were
better; but it's in for a penny in for a pound wi' us all; and folk may
talk; and bless your little brave heart, you'll stand a deal for your
father's sake, and so will I, though I do feel it above a bit, when he
puts out his hand as if to keep me off, and I only going to speak to him
about Clipper's knees; though I'll own I had wondered many a day when I
was to have the good-morrow master never missed sin' he were a boy
till--Well! and now you've seen the beds, and can say they looked mighty
pretty, and is done all as you wished; and we're got out again, and
breathing fresher air than yon sunbaked hole, with its smelling flowers,
not half so wholesome to snuff at as good stable-dung."

So the good man chatted on; not without the purpose of giving Ellinor
time to recover herself; and partly also to drown his own cares, which
lay heavier on his heart than he could say.  But he thought himself
rewarded by Ellinor's thanks, and warm pressure of his hard hand as she
got out at the front door, and bade him good-by.

The break to her days of weary monotony was the letters she constantly
received from Mr. Corbet.  And yet here again lurked the sting.  He was
all astonishment and indignation at Mr. Dunster's disappearance, or
rather flight, to America.  And now that she was growing stronger, he did
not scruple to express curiosity respecting the details, never doubting
but that she was perfectly acquainted with much that he wanted to know;
although he had too much delicacy to question her on the point which was
most important of all in his eyes, namely, how far it had affected Mr.
Wilkins's worldly prospects; for the report prevalent in Hamley had
reached London, that Mr. Dunster had made away with, or carried off,
trust property to a considerable extent, for all which Mr. Wilkins would
of course be liable.

It was hard work for Ralph Corbet to keep from seeking direct information
on this head from Mr. Ness, or, indeed, from Mr. Wilkins himself.  But he
restrained himself, knowing that in August he should be able to make all
these inquiries personally.  Before the end of the long vacation he had
hoped to marry Ellinor: that was the time which had been planned by them
when they had met in the early spring before her illness and all this
misfortune happened.  But now, as he wrote to his father, nothing could
be definitely arranged until he had paid his visit to Hamley, and seen
the state of affairs.

Accordingly one Saturday in August, he came to Ford Bank, this time as a
visitor to Ellinor's home, instead of to his old quarters at Mr. Ness's.

The house was still as if asleep in the full heat of the afternoon sun,
as Mr. Corbet drove up.  The window-blinds were down; the front door wide
open, great stands of heliotrope and roses and geraniums stood just
within the shadow of the hall; but through all the silence his approach
seemed to excite no commotion.  He thought it strange that he had not
been watched for, that Ellinor did not come running out to meet him, that
she allowed Fletcher to come and attend to his luggage, and usher him
into the library just like any common visitor, any morning-caller.  He
stiffened himself up into a moment's indignant coldness of manner.  But
it vanished in an instant when, on the door being opened, he saw Ellinor
standing holding by the table, looking for his appearance with almost
panting anxiety.  He thought of nothing then but her evident weakness,
her changed looks, for which no account of her illness had prepared him.
For she was deadly white, lips and all; and her dark eyes seemed
unnaturally enlarged, while the caves in which they were set were
strangely deep and hollow.  Her hair, too, had been cut off pretty
closely; she did not usually wear a cap, but with some faint idea of
making herself look better in his eye, she had put on one this day, and
the effect was that she seemed to be forty years of age; but one instant
after he had come in, her pale face was flooded with crimson, and her
eyes were full of tears.  She had hard work to keep herself from going
into hysterics, but she instinctively knew how much he would hate a
scene, and she checked herself in time.

"Oh," she murmured, "I am so glad to see you; it is such a comfort, such
an infinite pleasure."  And so she went on, cooing out words over him,
and stroking his hair with her thin fingers; while he rather tried to
avert his eyes, he was so much afraid of betraying how much he thought
her altered.

But when she came down, dressed for dinner, this sense of her change was
diminished to him.  Her short brown hair had already a little wave, and
was ornamented by some black lace; she wore a large black lace shawl--it
had been her mother's of old--over some delicate-coloured muslin dress;
her face was slightly flushed, and had the tints of a wild rose; her lips
kept pale and trembling with involuntary motion, it is true; and as the
lovers stood together, hand in hand, by the window, he was aware of a
little convulsive twitching at every noise, even while she seemed gazing
in tranquil pleasure on the long smooth slope of the newly-mown lawn,
stretching down to the little brook that prattled merrily over the stones
on its merry course to Hamley town.

He felt a stronger twitch than ever before; even while his ear, less
delicate than hers, could distinguish no peculiar sound.  About two
minutes after Mr. Wilkins entered the room.  He came up to Mr. Corbet
with a warm welcome: some of it real, some of it assumed.  He talked
volubly to him, taking little or no notice of Ellinor, who dropped into
the background, and sat down on the sofa by Miss Monro; for on this day
they were all to dine together.  Ralph Corbet thought that Mr. Wilkins
was aged; but no wonder, after all his anxiety of various kinds: Mr.
Dunster's flight and reported defalcations, Ellinor's illness, of the
seriousness of which her lover was now convinced by her appearance.

He would fain have spoken more to her during the dinner that ensued, but
Mr. Wilkins absorbed all his attention, talking and questioning on
subjects that left the ladies out of the conversation almost perpetually.
Mr. Corbet recognised his host's fine tact, even while his persistence in
talking annoyed him.  He was quite sure that Mr. Wilkins was anxious to
spare his daughter any exertion beyond that--to which, indeed, she seemed
scarely equal--of sitting at the head of the table.  And the more her
father talked--so fine an observer was Mr. Corbet--the more silent and
depressed Ellinor appeared.  But by-and-by he accounted for this inverse
ratio of gaiety, as he perceived how quickly Mr. Wilkins had his glass
replenished.  And here, again, Mr. Corbet drew his conclusions, from the
silent way in which, without a word or a sign from his master, Fletcher
gave him more wine continually--wine that was drained off at once.

"Six glasses of sherry before dessert," thought Mr. Corbet to himself.
"Bad habit--no wonder Ellinor looks grave."  And when the gentlemen were
left alone, Mr. Wilkins helped himself even still more freely; yet
without the slightest effect on the clearness and brilliancy of his
conversation.  He had always talked well and racily, that Ralph knew, and
in this power he now recognised a temptation to which he feared that his
future father-in-law had succumbed.  And yet, while he perceived that
this gift led into temptation, he coveted it for himself; for he was
perfectly aware that this fluency, this happy choice of epithets, was the
one thing he should fail in when he began to enter into the more active
career of his profession.  But after some time spent in listening, and
admiring, with this little feeling of envy lurking in the background, Mr.
Corbet became aware of Mr. Wilkins's increasing confusion of ideas, and
rather unnatural merriment; and, with a sudden revulsion from admiration
to disgust, he rose up to go into the library, where Ellinor and Miss
Monro were sitting.  Mr. Wilkins accompanied him, laughing and talking
somewhat loudly.  Was Ellinor aware of her father's state?  Of that Mr.
Corbet could not be sure.  She looked up with grave sad eyes as they came
into the room, but with no apparent sensation of surprise, annoyance, or
shame.  When her glance met her father's, Mr. Corbet noticed that it
seemed to sober the latter immediately.  He sat down near the open
window, and did not speak, but sighed heavily from time to time.  Miss
Monro took up a book, in order to leave the young people to themselves;
and after a little low murmured conversation, Ellinor went upstairs to
put on her things for a stroll through the meadows by the river-side.

They were sometimes sauntering along in the lovely summer twilight, now
resting on some grassy hedge-row bank, or standing still, looking at the
great barges, with their crimson sails, lazily floating down the river,
making ripples on the glassy opal surface of the water.  They did not
talk very much; Ellinor seemed disinclined for the exertion; and her
lover was thinking over Mr. Wilkins's behaviour, with some surprise and
distaste of the habit so evidently growing upon him.

They came home, looking serious and tired: yet they could not account for
their fatigue by the length of their walk, and Miss Monro, forgetting
Autolycus's song, kept fidgeting about Ellinor, and wondering how it was
she looked so pale, if she had only been as far as the Ash Meadow.  To
escape from this wonder, Ellinor went early to bed.  Mr. Wilkins was
gone, no one knew where, and Ralph and Miss Monro were left to a half-
hour's _tete-a-tete_.  He thought he could easily account for Ellinor's
languor, if, indeed, she had perceived as much as he had done of her
father's state, when they had come into the library after dinner.  But
there were many details which he was anxious to hear from a comparatively
indifferent person, and as soon as he could, he passed on from the
conversation about Ellinor's health, to inquiries as to the whole affair
of Mr. Dunster's disappearance.

Next to her anxiety about Ellinor, Miss Monro liked to dilate on the
mystery connected with Mr. Dunster's flight; for that was the word she
employed without hesitation, as she gave him the account of the event
universally received and believed in by the people of Hamley.  How Mr.
Dunster had never been liked by any one; how everybody remembered that he
could never look them straight in the face; how he always seemed to be
hiding something that he did not want to have known; how he had drawn a
large sum (exact quantity unknown) out of the county bank only the day
before he left Hamley, doubtless in preparation for his escape; how some
one had told Mr. Wilkins he had seen a man just like Dunster lurking
about the docks at Liverpool, about two days after he had left his
lodgings, but that this some one, being in a hurry, had not cared to stop
and speak to the man; how that the affairs in the office were discovered
to be in such a sad state that it was no wonder that Mr. Dunster had
absconded--he that had been so trusted by poor dear Mr. Wilkins.  Money
gone no one knew how or where.

"But has he no friends who can explain his proceedings, and account for
the missing money, in some way?" asked Mr. Corbet.

"No, none.  Mr. Wilkins has written everywhere, right and left, I
believe.  I know he had a letter from Mr. Dunster's nearest relation--a
tradesman in the City--a cousin, I think, and he could give no
information in any way.  He knew that about ten years ago Mr. Dunster had
had a great fancy for going to America, and had read a great many
travels--all just what a man would do before going off to a country."

"Ten years is a long time beforehand," said Mr. Corbet, half smiling;
"shows malice prepense with a vengeance."  But then, turning grave, he
said: "Did he leave Hamley in debt?"

"No; I never heard of that," said Miss Monro, rather unwillingly, for she
considered it as a piece of loyalty to the Wilkinses, whom Mr. Dunster
had injured (as she thought) to blacken his character as much as was
consistent with any degree of truth.

"It is a strange story," said Mr. Corbet, musing.

"Not at all," she replied, quickly; "I am sure, if you had seen the man,
with one or two side-locks of hair combed over his baldness, as if he
were ashamed of it, and his eyes that never looked at you, and his way of
eating with his knife when he thought he was not observed--oh, and
numbers of things!--you would not think it strange."

Mr. Corbet smiled.

"I only meant that he seems to have had no extravagant or vicious habits
which would account for his embezzlement of the money that is
missing--but, to be sure, money in itself is a temptation--only he, being
a partner, was in a fair way of making it without risk to himself.  Has
Mr. Wilkins taken any steps to have him arrested in America?  He might
easily do that."

"Oh, my dear Mr. Ralph, you don't know our good Mr. Wilkins!  He would
rather bear the loss, I am sure, and all this trouble and care which it
has brought upon him, than be revenged upon Mr. Dunster."

"Revenged!  What nonsense!  It is simple justice--justice to himself and
to others--to see that villainy is so sufficiently punished as to deter
others from entering upon such courses.  But I have little doubt Mr.
Wilkins has taken the right steps; he is not the man to sit down quietly
under such a loss."

"No, indeed! he had him advertised in the _Times_ and in the county
papers, and offered a reward of twenty pounds for information concerning
him."

"Twenty pounds was too little."

"So I said.  I told Ellinor that I would give twenty pounds myself to
have him apprehended, and she, poor darling! fell a-trembling, and said,
'I would give all I have--I would give my life.'  And then she was in
such distress, and sobbed so, I promised her I would never name it to her
again."

"Poor child--poor child! she wants change of scene.  Her nerves have been
sadly shaken by her illness."

The next day was Sunday; Ellinor was to go to church for the first time
since her illness.  Her father had decided it for her, or else she would
fain have stayed away--she would hardly acknowledge why, even to herself,
but it seemed to her as if the very words and presence of God must there
search her and find her out.

She went early, leaning on the arm of her lover, and trying to forget the
past in the present.  They walked slowly along between the rows of waving
golden corn ripe for the harvest.  Mr. Corbet gathered blue and scarlet
flowers, and made up a little rustic nosegay for her.  She took and stuck
it in her girdle, smiling faintly as she did so.

Hamley Church had, in former days, been collegiate, and was, in
consequence, much larger and grander than the majority of country-town
churches.  The Ford Bank pew was a square one, downstairs; the Ford Bank
servants sat in a front pew in the gallery, right before their master.
Ellinor was "hardening her heart" not to listen, not to hearken to what
might disturb the wound which was just being skinned over, when she
caught Dixon's face up above.  He looked worn, sad, soured, and anxious
to a miserable degree; but he was straining eyes and ears, heart and
soul, to hear the solemn words read from the pulpit, as if in them alone
he could find help in his strait.  Ellinor felt rebuked and humbled.

She was in a tumultuous state of mind when they left church; she wished
to do her duty, yet could not ascertain what it was.  Who was to help her
with wisdom and advice?  Assuredly he to whom her future life was to be
trusted.  But the case must be stated in an impersonal form.  No one, not
even her husband, must ever know anything against her father from her.
Ellinor was so artless herself, that she had little idea how quickly and
easily some people can penetrate motives, and combine disjointed
sentences.  She began to speak to Ralph on their slow, sauntering walk
homewards through the quiet meadows:

"Suppose, Ralph, that a girl was engaged to be married--"

"I can very easily suppose that, with you by me," said he, filling up her
pause.

"Oh! but I don't mean myself at all," replied she, reddening.  "I am only
thinking of what might happen; and suppose that this girl knew of some
one belonging to her--we will call it a brother--who had done something
wrong, that would bring disgrace upon the whole family if it was
known--though, indeed, it might not have been so very wrong as it seemed,
and as it would look to the world--ought she to break off her engagement
for fear of involving her lover in the disgrace?"

"Certainly not, without telling him her reason for doing so."

"Ah! but suppose she could not.  She might not be at liberty to do so."

"I can't answer supposititious cases.  I must have the facts--if facts
there are--more plainly before me before I can give an opinion.  Who are
you thinking of, Ellinor?" asked he, rather abruptly.

"Oh, of no one," she answered in affright.  "Why should I be thinking of
any one?  I often try to plan out what I should do, or what I ought to
do, if such and such a thing happened, just as you recollect I used to
wonder if I should have presence of mind in case of fire."

"Then, after all, you yourself are the girl who is engaged, and who has
the imaginary brother who gets into disgrace?"

"Yes, I suppose so," said she, a little annoyed at having betrayed any
personal interest in the affair.

He was silent, meditating.

"There is nothing wrong in it," said she, timidly, "is there?"

"I think you had better tell me fully out what is in your mind," he
replied, kindly.  "Something has happened which has suggested these
questions.  Are you putting yourself in the place of any one about whom
you have been hearing lately?  I know you used to do so formerly, when
you were a little girl."

"No; it was a very foolish question of mine, and I ought not to have said
anything about it.  See! here is Mr. Ness overtaking us."

The clergyman joined them on the broad walk that ran by the river-side,
and the talk became general.  It was a relief to Ellinor, who had not
attained her end, but who had gone far towards betraying something of her
own individual interest in the question she had asked.  Ralph had been
more struck even by her manner than her words.  He was sure that
something lurked behind, and had an idea of his own that it was connected
with Dunster's disappearance.  But he was glad that Mr. Ness's joining
them gave him leisure to consider a little.

The end of his reflections was, that the next day, Monday, he went into
the town, and artfully learnt all he could hear about Mr Dunster's
character and mode of going on; and with still more skill he extracted
the popular opinion as to the embarrassed nature of Mr. Wilkins's
affairs--embarrassment which was generally attributed to Dunster's
disappearance with a good large sum belonging to the firm in his
possession.  But Mr. Corbet thought otherwise; he had accustomed himself
to seek out the baser motives for men's conduct, and to call the result
of these researches wisdom.  He imagined that Dunster had been well paid
by Mr. Wilkins for his disappearance, which was an easy way of accounting
for the derangement of accounts and loss of money that arose, in fact,
from Mr. Wilkins's extravagance of habits and growing intemperance.

On the Monday afternoon he said to Ellinor, "Mr. Ness interrupted us
yesterday in a very interesting conversation.  Do you remember, love?"

Ellinor reddened and kept her head still more intently bent over a sketch
she was making.

"Yes; I recollect."

"I have been thinking about it.  I still think she ought to tell her
lover that such disgrace hung over him--I mean, over the family with whom
he was going to connect himself.  Of course, the only effect would be to
make him stand by her still more for her frankness."

"Oh! but, Ralph, it might perhaps be something she ought not to tell,
whatever came of her silence."

"Of course there might be all sorts of cases.  Unless I knew more I could
not pretend to judge."

This was said rather more coolly.  It had the desired effect.  Ellinor
laid down her brush, and covered her face with her hand.  After a pause,
she turned towards him and said:

"I will tell you this; and more you must not ask me.  I know you are as
safe as can be.  I am the girl, you are the lover, and possible shame
hangs over my father, if something--oh, so dreadful" (here she blanched),
"but not so very much his fault, is ever found out."

Though this was nothing more than he expected, though Ralph thought that
he was aware what the dreadful something might be, yet, when it was
acknowledged in words, his heart contracted, and for a moment he forgot
the intent, wistful, beautiful face, creeping close to his to read his
expression aright.  But after that his presence of mind came in aid.  He
took her in his arms and kissed her; murmuring fond words of sympathy,
and promises of faith, nay, even of greater love than before, since
greater need she might have of that love.  But somehow he was glad when
the dressing-bell rang, and in the solitude of his own room he could
reflect on what he had heard; for the intelligence had been a great shock
to him, although he had fancied that his morning's inquiries had prepared
him for it.




CHAPTER IX.


Ralph Corbet found it a very difficult thing to keep down his curiosity
during the next few days.  It was a miserable thing to have Ellinor's
unspoken secret severing them like a phantom.  But he had given her his
word that he would make no further inquiries from her.  Indeed, he
thought he could well enough make out the outline of past events; still,
there was too much left to conjecture for his mind not to be always busy
on the subject.  He felt inclined to probe Mr. Wilkins in their after-
dinner conversation, in which his host was frank and lax enough on many
subjects.  But once touch on the name of Dunster and Mr. Wilkins sank
into a kind of suspicious depression of spirits; talking little, and with
evident caution; and from time to time shooting furtive glances at his
interlocutor's face.  Ellinor was resolutely impervious to any attempts
of his to bring his conversation with her back to the subject which more
and more engrossed Ralph Corbet's mind.  She had done her duty, as she
understood it; and had received assurances which she was only too glad to
believe fondly with all the tender faith of her heart.  Whatever came to
pass, Ralph's love would still be hers; nor was he unwarned of what might
come to pass in some dread future day.  So she shut her eyes to what
might be in store for her (and, after all, the chances were immeasurably
in her favour); and she bent herself with her whole strength into
enjoying the present.  Day by day Mr. Corbet's spirits flagged.  He was,
however, so generally uniform in the tenor of his talk--never very merry,
and always avoiding any subject that might call out deep feeling either
on his own or any one else's part, that few people were aware of his
changes of mood.  Ellinor felt them, though she would not acknowledge
them: it was bringing her too much face to face with the great terror of
her life.

One morning he announced the fact of his brother's approaching marriage;
the wedding was hastened on account of some impending event in the duke's
family; and the home letter he had received that day was to bid his
presence at Stokely Castle, and also to desire him to be at home by a
certain time not very distant, in order to look over the requisite legal
papers, and to give his assent to some of them.  He gave many reasons why
this unlooked-for departure of his was absolutely necessary; but no one
doubted it.  He need not have alleged such reiterated excuses.  The truth
was, he was restrained and uncomfortable at Ford Bank ever since
Ellinor's confidence.  He could not rightly calculate on the most
desirable course for his own interests, while his love for her was
constantly being renewed by her sweet presence.  Away from her, he could
judge more wisely.  Nor did he allege any false reasons for his
departure; but the sense of relief to himself was so great at his recall
home, that he was afraid of having it perceived by others; and so took
the very way which, if others had been as penetrating as himself, would
have betrayed him.

Mr. Wilkins, too, had begun to feel the restraint of Ralph's grave
watchful presence.  Ellinor was not strong enough to be married; nor was
the promised money forthcoming if she had been.  And to have a fellow
dawdling about the house all day, sauntering into the flower-garden,
peering about everywhere, and having a kind of right to put all manner of
unexpected questions, was anything but agreeable.  It was only Ellinor
that clung to his presence--clung as though some shadow of what might
happen before they met again had fallen on her spirit.  As soon as he had
left the house she flew up to a spare bedroom window, to watch for the
last glimpse of the fly which was taking him into the town.  And then she
kissed the part of the pane on which his figure, waving an arm out of the
carriage window, had last appeared; and went down slowly to gather
together all the things he had last touched--the pen he had mended, the
flower he had played with, and to lock them up in the little quaint
cabinet that had held her treasures since she was a tiny child.

Miss Monro was, perhaps, very wise in proposing the translation of a
difficult part of Dante for a distraction to Ellinor.  The girl went
meekly, if reluctantly, to the task set her by her good governess, and by-
and-by her mind became braced by the exertion.

Ralph's people were not very slow in discovering that something had not
gone on quite smoothly with him at Ford Bank.  They knew his ways and
looks with family intuition, and could easily be certain thus far.  But
not even his mother's skilfulest wiles, nor his favourite sister's
coaxing, could obtain a word or a hint; and when his father, the squire,
who had heard the opinions of the female part of the family on this head,
began, in his honest blustering way, in their _tete-a-tetes_ after
dinner, to hope that Ralph was thinking better than to run his head into
that confounded Hamley attorney's noose, Ralph gravely required Mr.
Corbet to explain his meaning, which he professed not to understand so
worded.  And when the squire had, with much perplexity, put it into the
plain terms of hoping that his son was thinking of breaking off his
engagement to Miss Wilkins, Ralph coolly asked him if he was aware that,
in that case, he should lose all title to being a man of honour, and
might have an action brought against him for breach of promise?

Yet not the less for all this was the idea in his mind as a future
possibility.

Before very long the Corbet family moved _en masse_ to Stokely Castle for
the wedding.  Of course, Ralph associated on equal terms with the
magnates of the county, who were the employers of Ellinor's father, and
spoke of him always as "Wilkins," just as they spoke of the butler as
"Simmons."  Here, too, among a class of men high above local gossip, and
thus unaware of his engagement, he learnt the popular opinion respecting
his future father-in-law; an opinion not entirely respectful, though
intermingled with a good deal of personal liking.  "Poor Wilkins," as
they called him, "was sadly extravagant for a man in his position; had no
right to spend money, and act as if he were a man of independent
fortune."  His habits of life were criticised; and pity, not free from
blame, was bestowed upon him for the losses he had sustained from his
late clerk's disappearance and defalcation.  But what could be expected
if a man did not choose to attend to his own business?

The wedding went by, as grand weddings do, without let or hindrance,
according to the approved pattern.  A Cabinet minister honoured it with
his presence, and, being a distant relation of the Brabants, remained for
a few days after the grand occasion.  During this time he became rather
intimate with Ralph Corbet; many of their tastes were in common.  Ralph
took a great interest in the manner of working out political questions;
in the balance and state of parties; and had the right appreciation of
the exact qualities on which the minister piqued himself.  In return, the
latter was always on the look-out for promising young men, who, either by
their capability of speech-making or article-writing, might advance the
views of his party.  Recognising the powers he most valued in Ralph, he
spared no pains to attach him to his own political set.  When they
separated, it was with the full understanding that they were to see a
good deal of each other in London.

The holiday Ralph allowed himself was passing rapidly away; but, before
he returned to his chambers and his hard work, he had promised to spend a
few more days with Ellinor; and it suited him to go straight from the
duke's to Ford Bank.  He left the castle soon after breakfast--the
luxurious, elegant breakfast, served by domestics who performed their
work with the accuracy and perfection of machines.  He arrived at Ford
Bank before the man-servant had quite finished the dirtier part of his
morning's work, and he came to the glass-door in his striped cotton
jacket, a little soiled, and rolling up his working apron.  Ellinor was
not yet strong enough to get up and go out and gather flowers for the
rooms, so those left from yesterday were rather faded; in short, the
contrast from entire completeness and exquisite freshness of arrangement
struck forcibly upon Ralph's perceptions, which were critical rather than
appreciative; and, as his affections were always subdued to his
intellect, Ellinor's lovely face and graceful figure flying to meet him
did not gain his full approval, because her hair was dressed in an old-
fashioned way, her waist was either too long or too short, her sleeves
too full or too tight for the standard of fashion to which his eye had
been accustomed while scanning the bridesmaids and various highborn
ladies at Stokely Castle.

But, as he had always piqued himself upon being able to put on one side
all superficial worldliness in his chase after power, it did not do for
him to shrink from seeing and facing the incompleteness of moderate
means.  Only marriage upon moderate means was gradually becoming more
distasteful to him.

Nor did his subsequent intercourse with Lord Bolton, the Cabinet minister
before mentioned, tend to reconcile him to early matrimony.  At Lord
Bolton's house he met polished and intellectual society, and all that
smoothness in ministering to the lower wants in eating and drinking which
seems to provide that the right thing shall always be at the right place
at the right time, so that the want of it shall never impede for an
instant the feast of wit or reason; while, if he went to the houses of
his friends, men of the same college and standing as himself, who had
been seduced into early marriages, he was uncomfortably aware of numerous
inconsistencies and hitches in their _menages_.  Besides, the idea of the
possible disgrace that might befall the family with which he thought of
allying himself haunted him with the tenacity and also with the
exaggeration of a nightmare, whenever he had overworked himself in his
search after available and profitable knowledge, or had a fit of
indigestion after the exquisite dinners he was learning so well to
appreciate.

Christmas was, of course, to be devoted to his own family; it was an
unavoidable necessity, as he told Ellinor, while, in reality, he was
beginning to find absence from his betrothed something of a relief.  Yet
the wranglings and folly of his home, even blessed by the presence of a
Lady Maria, made him look forward to Easter at Ford Bank with something
of the old pleasure.

Ellinor, with the fine tact which love gives, had discovered his
annoyance at various little incongruities in the household at the time of
his second visit in the previous autumn, and had laboured to make all as
perfect as she could before his return.  But she had much to struggle
against.  For the first time in her life there was a great want of ready
money; she could scarcely obtain the servants' wages; and the bill for
the spring seeds was a heavy weight on her conscience.  For Miss Monro's
methodical habits had taught her pupil great exactitude as to all money
matters.

Then her father's temper had become very uncertain.  He avoided being
alone with her whenever he possibly could; and the consciousness of this,
and of the terrible mutual secret which was the cause of this
estrangement, were the reasons why Ellinor never recovered her pretty
youthful bloom after her illness.  Of course it was to this that the
outside world attributed her changed appearance.  They would shake their
heads and say, "Ah, poor Miss Wilkins!  What a lovely creature she was
before that fever!"

But youth is youth, and will assert itself in a certain elasticity of
body and spirits; and at times Ellinor forgot that fearful night for
several hours together.  Even when her father's averted eye brought it
all once more before her, she had learnt to form excuses and palliations,
and to regard Mr. Dunster's death as only the consequence of an
unfortunate accident.  But she tried to put the miserable remembrance
entirely out of her mind; to go on from day to day thinking only of the
day, and how to arrange it so as to cause the least irritation to her
father.  She would so gladly have spoken to him on the one subject which
overshadowed all their intercourse; she fancied that by speaking she
might have been able to banish the phantom, or reduce its terror to what
she believed to be the due proportion.  But her father was evidently
determined to show that he was never more to be spoken to on that
subject; and all she could do was to follow his lead on the rare
occasions that they fell into something like the old confidential
intercourse.  As yet, to her, he had never given way to anger; but before
her he had often spoken in a manner which both pained and terrified her.
Sometimes his eye in the midst of his passion caught on her face of
affright and dismay, and then he would stop, and make such an effort to
control himself as sometimes ended in tears.  Ellinor did not understand
that both these phases were owing to his increasing habit of drinking
more than he ought to have done.  She set them down as the direct effects
of a sorely burdened conscience; and strove more and more to plan for his
daily life at home, how it should go on with oiled wheels, neither a jerk
nor a jar.  It was no wonder she looked wistful, and careworn, and old.
Miss Monro was her great comfort; the total unconsciousness on that
lady's part of anything below the surface, and yet her full and delicate
recognition of all the little daily cares and trials, made her sympathy
most valuable to Ellinor, while there was no need to fear that it would
ever give Miss Monro that power of seeing into the heart of things which
it frequently confers upon imaginative people, who are deeply attached to
some one in sorrow.

There was a strong bond between Ellinor and Dixon, although they scarcely
ever exchanged a word save on the most common-place subjects; but their
silence was based on different feelings from that which separated Ellinor
from her father.  Ellinor and Dixon could not speak freely, because their
hearts were full of pity for the faulty man whom they both loved so well,
and tried so hard to respect.

This was the state of the household to which Ralph Corbet came down at
Easter.  He might have been known in London as a brilliant diner-out by
this time; but he could not afford to throw his life away in fireworks;
he calculated his forces, and condensed their power as much as might be,
only visiting where he was likely to meet men who could help in his
future career.  He had been invited to spend the Easter vacation at a
certain country house which would be full of such human stepping-stones;
and he declined in order to keep his word to Ellinor, and go to Ford
Bank.  But he could not help looking upon himself a little in the light
of a martyr to duty; and perhaps this view of his own merits made him
chafe under his future father-in-law's irritability of manner, which now
showed itself even to him.  He found himself distinctly regretting that
he had suffered himself to be engaged so early in life; and having become
conscious of the temptation and not having repelled it at once, of course
it returned and returned, and gradually obtained the mastery over him.
What was to be gained by keeping to his engagement with Ellinor?  He
should have a delicate wife to look after, and even more than the common
additional expenses of married life.  He should have a father-in-law
whose character at best had had only a local and provincial
respectability, which it was now daily losing by habits which were both
sensual and vulgarising; a man, too, who was strangely changing from
joyous geniality into moody surliness.  Besides, he doubted if, in the
evident change in the prosperity of the family, the fortune to be paid
down on the occasion of his marriage to Ellinor could be forthcoming.  And
above all, and around all, there hovered the shadow of some unrevealed
disgrace, which might come to light at any time and involve him in it.  He
thought he had pretty well ascertained the nature of this possible shame,
and had little doubt it would turn out to be that Dunster's
disappearance, to America or elsewhere, had been an arranged plan with
Mr. Wilkins.  Although Mr. Ralph Corbet was capable of suspecting him of
this mean crime (so far removed from the impulsive commission of the past
sin which was dragging him daily lower and lower down), it was of a kind
that was peculiarly distasteful to the acute lawyer, who foresaw how such
base conduct would taint all whose names were ever mentioned, even by
chance, in connection with it.  He used to lie miserably tossing on his
sleepless bed, turning over these things in the night season.  He was
tormented by all these thoughts; he would bitterly regret the past events
that connected him with Ellinor, from the day when he first came to read
with Mr. Ness up to the present time.  But when he came down in the
morning, and saw the faded Ellinor flash into momentary beauty at his
entrance into the dining-room, and when she blushingly drew near with the
one single flower freshly gathered, which it had been her custom to place
in his button-hole when he came down to breakfast, he felt as if his
better self was stronger than temptation, and as if he must be an honest
man and honourable lover, even against his wish.

As the day wore on the temptation gathered strength.  Mr. Wilkins came
down, and while he was on the scene Ellinor seemed always engrossed by
her father, who apparently cared little enough for all her attentions.
Then there was a complaining of the food, which did not suit the sickly
palate of a man who had drunk hard the night before; and possibly these
complaints were extended to the servants, and their incompleteness or
incapacity was thus brought prominently before the eyes of Ralph, who
would have preferred to eat a dry crust in silence, or to have gone
without breakfast altogether, if he could have had intellectual
conversation of some high order, to having the greatest dainties with the
knowledge of the care required in their preparation thus coarsely
discussed before him.  By the time such breakfasts were finished, Ellinor
looked thirty, and her spirits were gone for the day.  It had become
difficult for Ralph to contract his mind to her small domestic interests,
and she had little else to talk to him about, now that he responded but
curtly to all her questions about himself, and was weary of professing a
love which he was ceasing to feel, in all the passionate nothings which
usually make up so much of lovers' talk.  The books she had been reading
were old classics, whose place in literature no longer admitted of keen
discussion; the poor whom she cared for were all very well in their way;
and, if they could have been brought in to illustrate a theory, hearing
about them might have been of some use; but, as it was, it was simply
tiresome to hear day after day of Betty Palmer's rheumatism and Mrs.
Kay's baby's fits.  There was no talking politics with her, because she
was so ignorant that she always agreed with everything he said.

He even grew to find luncheon and Miss Monro not unpleasant varieties to
his monotonous _tete-a-tetes_.  Then came the walk, generally to the town
to fetch Mr. Wilkins from his office; and once or twice it was pretty
evident how he had been employing his hours.  One day in particular his
walk was so unsteady and his speech so thick, that Ralph could only
wonder how it was that Ellinor did not perceive the cause; but she was
too openly anxious about the headache of which her father complained to
have been at all aware of the previous self-indulgence which must have
brought it on.  This very afternoon, as ill-luck would have it, the Duke
of Hinton and a gentleman whom Ralph had met in town at Lord Bolton's
rode by, and recognised him; saw Ralph supporting a tipsy man with such
quiet friendly interest as must show all passers-by that they were
previous friends.  Mr. Corbet chafed and fumed inwardly all the way home
after this unfortunate occurrence; he was in a

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/2522