"Phil thinks some one may possibly come to him on business—to explain things," said Elinor, anxious on her part to make it clear that it was not out of mere vacancy that her lover had watched so closely the carriages on the road.

"Unfortunately, there is something like a smash," he said; "they'll keep it out of the papers if they can, but you may see it in the papers; the manager has run away, and there's a question about some books. I don't suppose you would understand—they may come to me here about it, or they may wait till I go back to town."

"I thought you were going to Ireland, Phil."

"So I shall, probably, just for three days—to fill up the time. One wants to be doing something to keep one's self down. You can't keep quiet and behave yourself when you are going to be married in a week: unless you're a little chit of a girl without any feelings," he said with a laugh. And Elinor laughed too; while Mrs. Dennistoun sat as grave as a judge at the head of the table. But Phil was not daunted by her serious face: so long as the road was quite clear he had all the appearance of a perfectly easy mind.

"We have been talking about literature," he said. "I am a stupid fellow, as perhaps you know, for that sort of thing. But Nell is to indoctrinate me. We mean to take a big box of books, and I'm to be made to read poetry and all sorts of fine things in my honeymoon."

"That is a new idea," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "I thought Elinor meant to give up reading, on the other hand, to make things square."

There was a little breath of a protest from Elinor. "Oh, mamma!" but she left the talk (he could do it so much better) in Compton's hand.

"I expect to figure as a sort of prodigy in my family," he said; "we're not bookish. The Jew goes in for French novels, but I don't intend to let Nell touch them, so you may be easy in your mind."

"I have no doubt Lady Mariamne makes a good selection," said Mrs. Dennistoun.

"Not she! she reads whatever comes, and the more salt the better. The Jew is quite an emancipated person. Don't you think she'll bore you rather in this little house? She carries bales of rubbish with her wherever she goes, and her maid, and her dog, and I don't know what. If I were you I'd write, or better wire, and tell her there's a capital train from Victoria will bring her here in time for the wedding, and that it's a thousand pities she should disturb herself to come for the night."

"If your sister can put up with my small accommodation, I shall of course be happy to have her, whatever she brings with her," Mrs. Dennistoun said.

"Oh! it's not a question of putting up—she'd be delighted, I'm sure: but I think you'll find her a great bore. She is exceedingly fussy when she has not all her things about her. However, you must judge for yourself. But if you think better of it, wire a few words, and it'll be all right. I'm to go to the old Rectory, Nell says."

"It is not a particularly old Rectory; it is a very nice, pleasant house. I think you will find yourself quite comfortable—you and the gentleman——"

"Dick Bolsover, who is going to see me through it: and I daresay I should not sleep much, if I were in the most luxurious bed in the world. They say a man who is going to be hanged sleeps like a top, but I don't think I shall; what do you say, Nell?"

"Elinor, I should think, could have no opinion on the subject," said Mrs. Dennistoun, pale with anger. "You will all dine here, of course. Some other friends are coming, and a cousin, Mr. Tatham, of Tatham's Cross."

"Is that," said Phil, "the Cousin John?"

"John, I am sorry to say, is abroad; the long vacation is the worst time. It is his father who is coming, and his sister, Mary Tatham, who is Elinor's bridesmaid—she and Miss Hudson at the Rectory."

"Only two; and very sensible, instead of the train one sees, all thinking how best to show themselves off. Dick Bolsover is man enough to tackle them both. He expects some fun, I can tell you. What is there to be after we are gone, Nell?" He stopped and looked round with a laugh. "Rather close quarters for a ball," he said.

"There will be no ball. You forget that when you take Elinor away I shall be alone. A solitary woman living in a cottage, as you remark, does not give balls. I am much afraid that there will be very little fun for your friend."

"Oh, he'll amuse himself well enough; he's the sort of fellow who always makes himself at home. A Rectory will be great fun for him; I don't suppose he was ever in one before, unless perhaps when he was a boy at school. Yes, as you say—what a lot of trouble it will be for you to be sure: not as if Nell had a sister to enjoy the fun after. It's a thousand pities you did not decide to bring her up to town, and get us shuffled off there. You might have got a little house for next to nothing at this time of the year, and saved all the row, turning everything upside down in this nice little place, and troubling yourself with visitors and so forth. But one always thinks of that sort of thing too late."

"I should not have adopted such an expedient in any case. Elinor must be married among her own people, wherever her lot may be cast afterwards. Everybody here has known her ever since she was born."

"Ah, that's a thing ladies think of, I suppose," said Compton. He had stuck his glass into his eye and was gazing out of the window. "Very jolly view," he continued. "And what's that, Nell, raising clouds of dust? I haven't such quick eyes as you."

"I should think it must be a circus or a menagerie, or something, mamma."

"Very likely," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "They sometimes come this way on the road to Portsmouth, and give little representations in all the villages, to the great excitement of the country folk."

"We are the country folk, and I feel quite excited," said Phil, dropping his glass. "Nell, if there's a representation, you and I will go to-night."

"Oh, Phil, what——" Elinor was about to say folly: but she paused, seeing a look in his eye which she had already learned to know, and added "fun," in a voice which sounded almost like an echo of his own.

"There is nothing like being out in the wilderness like this to make one relish a little fun, eh? I daresay you always go. The Jew is the one for every village fair within ten miles when she is in the country. She says they're better than any play. Hallo! what is that?"

"It is some one coming round the gravel path."

A more simple statement could not be, but it made Compton strangely uneasy. He rose up hastily from the table. "It is, perhaps, the man I am looking for. If you'll permit me, I'll go and see."

He went out of the room, calling Elinor by a look and slight movement of his head, but when he came out into the hall was met by a trim clerical figure and genial countenance, the benign yet self-assured looks of the Rector of the Parish: none other could this smiling yet important personage be.



CHAPTER X.

The Rector came in with his smiling and rosy face. He was, as many of his parishioners thought, a picture of a country clergyman. Such a healthy colour, as clear as a girl's, limpid blue eyes, with very light eyelashes and eyebrows; a nice round face, "beautifully modelled," according to Miss Sarah Hill, who did a little in that way herself, and knew how to approve of a Higher Sculptor's work. And then the neatest and blackest of coats, and the whitest and stiffest of collars. Mr. Hudson, I need scarcely say, was not so left to himself as to permit his clerical character to be divined by means of a white tie. He came in, as was natural among country neighbours, without thinking of any bell or knocker on the easily opened door, and was about to peep into the drawing-room with "Anybody in?" upon his smiling lips, when he saw a gentleman approaching, picking up his hat as he advanced. Mr. Hudson paused a moment in uncertainty. "Mr. Compton, I am sure," he said, holding out both of his plump pink hands. "Ah, Elinor too! I was sure I could not be mistaken. And I am exceedingly glad to make your acquaintance." He shook Phil's hand up and down in a sort of see-saw. "Very glad to make your acquaintance! though you are the worst enemy Windyhill has had for many a day—carrying off the finest lamb in all the fold."

"Yes, I'm a wolf, I suppose," said Phil. He went to the door and took a long look out while Elinor led the Rector into the drawing-room. Then Mr. Compton lounged in after them, with his hands in his pockets, and placed himself in the bow-window, where he could still see the white line across the combe of the distant road.

"They'll think I have stolen a march upon them all, Elinor," said the Rector, "chancing upon Mr. Compton like this, a quite unexpected pleasure. I shall keep them on the tenterhooks, asking them whom they suppose I have met? and they will give everybody but the right person. What a thing for me to have been the first person to see your intended, my dear! and I congratulate you, Elinor," said the Rector, dropping his voice; "a fine handsome fellow, and such an air! You are a lucky girl—" he paused a little and said, with a slight hesitation, in a whisper, "so far as meets the eye."

"Oh, Mr. Hudson, don't spoil everything," said Elinor, in the same tone.

"Well, I cannot tell, can I, my dear?—the first peep I have had." He cleaved his throat and raised his voice. "I believe we are to have the pleasure of entertaining you, Mr. Compton, on a certain joyful occasion (joyful to you, not to us). I need not say how pleased my wife and I and the other members of the family will be. There are not very many of us—we are only five in number—my son, and my daughter, and Miss Dale, my wife's sister, but much younger than Mrs. Hudson—who has done us the pleasure of staying with us for part of the year. I think she has met you somewhere, or knows some of your family, or—something. She is a great authority on noble families. I don't know whether it is because she has been a good deal in society, or whether it is out of Debrett——"

"Nell, come and tell me what this is," Compton said.

"Oh, Phil! it is nothing, it is a carriage. I don't know what it is. Be civil to the Rector, please."

"So I am, perfectly civil."

"You have not answered a single word, and he has been talking to you for ten minutes."

"Well, but he hasn't said anything that I can answer. He says Miss Something or other knows my family. Perhaps she does. Well, much good may it do her! but what can I say to that? I am sure I don't know hers. I didn't come here to be talked to by the Rector. Could we slip out and leave him with your mother? That would suit his book a great deal better. Come, let's go."

"Oh! he is speaking to you, Phil."

Compton turned round and eyed the Rector. "Yes?" he said in so marked an interrogative that Mr. Hudson stopped short and flushed. He had been talking for some time.

"Oh! I was not precisely asking a question," he said, in his quiet tones. "I was saying that we believe and hope that another gentleman is coming with you—for the occasion."

"Dick Bolsover," said Compton, "a son of Lord Freshfield's; perhaps Miss ——, the lady you were talking of, may know his family too. His brother got a little talked of in that affair about Fille d'Or, don't you know, at Newmarket. But Dick is a rattling good fellow, doesn't race, and has no vices. He is coming to stand by me and see that all's right."

"We shall be happy to see Mr. Bolsover, I am sure." The Rector rubbed his hands and said to himself with pleasure that two Honourables in his quiet house was something to think of, and that he hoped it would not turn the heads of the ladies, and make Alice expect—one couldn't tell what. And then he said, by way of changing yet continuing the subject, "I suppose you've been looking at the presents. Elinor must have shown you her presents."

"By Jove, I never thought of the presents. Have you got a lot, Nell?"

"She has got, if I may be allowed to answer for her, having known her all her life, a great many pretty things, Mr. Compton. We are not rich, to be sure, her old friends here. We have to content ourselves with but a small token of a great deal of affection; but still there are a number of pretty things. Elinor, what were you thinking of, my dear, not to show Mr. Compton the little set out which you showed us? Come, I should myself like to look them over again."

Phil gave another long look at the distant road, and then he thrust his arm into Elinor's and said, "To be sure, come along, Nell. It will be something to do." He did not wait for the Rector to pass first, which Elinor thought would have been better manners, but thrust her before him quite regardless of the older people. "Let's see the trumpery," he said.

"Don't use such a word, Phil: the Rector will be so hurt."

"Oh, will he? did he work you an—antimacassar or something?"

"Phil, speak low at least. No, but his daughter did; and they gave me——"

"I know: a cardcase or a button-hook, or something. And how many biscuit-boxes have you got, and clocks, and that sort of thing? I advise you to have an auction as soon as we get away. Hallo! that's a nice little thing; look pretty on your pretty white neck I should say, Nell. Who gave you that?" He took John's necklace out of its box where it had lain undisturbed until now, and pulled it through his fingers. "Cost a pretty bit of money that, I should say. You can raise the wind on it when we're down on our luck, Nell."

"My cousin John, whom you have heard me speak of, gave me that, Phil," said Elinor, with great gravity. She thought it necessary, she could scarcely tell why, to make a stand for her cousin John.

"Ah, I thought it was one of the disappointed ones," said Phil, flinging it back carelessly onto the bed of white velvet where it had been fitted so exactly. "That's how they show their spite; for of course I can't give you anything half as good as that."

"There was no disappointment in the matter," said Elinor, almost angry with the misconceptions of her lover.

"You are a nice one," said Compton, taking her by the chin, "to tell me! as if I didn't know the world a long sight better than you do, my little Nell."

The Rector, who was following slowly, for he did not like to go up-stairs in a hurry, saw this attitude and drew back, a little scandalized. "Perhaps we were indiscreet to—to follow them too closely," he said, disconcerted. "Please to go in first, Mrs. Dennistoun—the young couple will not mind you."

Mr. Hudson was prim; but he was rather pleased to see that "the young couple" were, as he said, so fond of each other. He went into the room under the protection of the mother—blushing a little. It reminded him, as he said afterwards, of his own young days; but it was only natural that he should walk up direct to the place where his kettle stood conspicuous, waiting only the spark of a match to begin to boil the water for the first conjugal tea. It appeared to him a beautiful idea as he put his head on one side and looked at it. It was like the inauguration of the true British fireside, the cosy privacy in which, after the man had done his work, the lady awaited him at home, with the tea-kettle steaming. A generation before Mr. Hudson there would have been a pair of slippers airing beside the fire. But neither of these preparations supply the ideal of perfect happiness now.

"I say, where did you get these hideous things?" said Compton, approaching the table on which "the silver" was laid out. By a special dispensation it was Lady Mariamne's dishes which caught Phil's attention. "Some old grandmother, I suppose, that had 'em in the house. Hallo! if it isn't the Jew! Nell, you don't mean to tell me you got these horrors from the Jew?"

"They are supposed to be—quite handsome," said Elinor, with a suppressed laugh. "We must not criticise. It is very kind of people to send presents at all. We all know it is a very severe tax—to those who have a great many friends——"

"The stingy old miser," said Compton. "Rolling in money, and to send you these! By Jove! there's a neat little thing now that looks what it is; probably one of your nice country friends, Nell——" (It was the kettle, as a kind Providence decreed; and both the ladies breathed an internal thanksgiving.) "Shows like a little gem beside that old, thundering, mean-spirited Jew!"

"That," said the Rector, bridling a little and pink with pleasure, "is our little offering: and I'm delighted to think that it should please so good a judge. It was chosen with great care. I saw it first myself, and the idea flashed upon me—quite an inspiration—that it was the very thing for Elinor; and when I went home I told my wife—the very thing—for her boudoir, should she not be seeing company—or just for your little teas when you are by yourselves. I could at once imagine the dear girl looking so pretty in one of those wonderful white garments that are in the next room."

"Hallo!" said Compton, with a laugh, "do you show off your things in this abandoned way, Nell, to the killingest old cov——"

She put her hand up to his mouth with a cry of dismay and laughter, but the Rector, with a smile and another little blush, discreetly turned his back. He was truly glad to see that they were so fond of each other, and thought it was pretty and innocent that they should not mind showing it—but it was a little embarrassing for an old and prim clergyman to look on.

"What a pleasure it must be to you, my dear lady," he said when the young couple had gone: which took place very soon, for Phil soon grew tired of the presents, and he was ill at ease when there was no window from which he could watch the road—"what a pleasure to see them so much attached! Of course, family advantage and position is always of importance—but when you get devoted affection, too——"

"I hope there is devoted affection," said Mrs. Dennistoun; "at all events, there is what we are all united in calling 'love,' for the present. He is in love with Elinor—I don't think there can be much doubt of that."

"I did not of course know that he was here," said the Rector, with some hesitation. "I came with the intention of speaking—I am very sorry to see in the papers to-day something about that Joint-Stock Company of which Mr. Compton was a director. It's rather a mysterious paragraph: but it's something about the manager having absconded, and that some of the directors are said to be involved."

"Do you mean my future son-in-law?" she said, turning quickly upon him.

"Good heavens, no! I wouldn't for the world insinuate—— It was only that one felt a desire to know. Just upon the eve of a marriage it's—it's alarming to hear of a business the bridegroom is involved in being—what you may call broken up."

"That was one of the things Mr. Compton came to tell us about," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "He said he hoped it might be kept out of the papers, but that some of the books have got lost or destroyed. I am afraid I know very little about business. But he has lost very little—nothing to speak of—which was all that concerned me."

"To be sure," said the Rector, but in a tone not so assured as his words. "It is not perhaps quite a nice thing to be director of a company that—that collapses in this way. I fear some poor people will lose their money. I fear there will be things in the papers."

"On what ground?" she said. "Oh, I don't deny there may be some one to blame; but Mr. Compton was, I suspect, only on the board for the sake of his name. He is not a business man. He did it, as so many do, for the sake of a pretence of being in something. And then, I believe, the directors got a little by it; they had a few hundreds a year."

"To be sure," said Mr. Hudson, but still doubtfully; and then he brightened up. "For my part, I don't believe there is a word of truth in it. Since I have seen him, indeed, I have quite changed my opinion—a fine figure of a man, looking an aristocrat every inch of him. Such a contrast and complement to our dear Elinor—and so fond of her. A man like that would never have a hand in any sham concern. If it was really a bogus company, as people say, he must be one of the sufferers. That is quite my decided opinion; only the ladies, you know—the ladies who have not seen him, and who are so much more suspicious by nature (I don't know that you are, my dear Mrs. Dennistoun), would give me no rest. They thought it was my duty to interfere. But I am sure they are quite wrong."

To think that it was the ladies of the Rector's family who were interfering made Mrs. Dennistoun very wroth. "Next time they have anything to say, you should make them come themselves," she said.

"Oh, they would not do that. They say it is the clergyman's business, not theirs. Besides, you know, I have not time to read all the papers. We get the Times, and Mary Dale has the Morning Post, and another thing that is all about stocks and shares. She has such a head for business—far more than I can pretend to. She thought——"

"Mr. Hudson, I fear I do not wish to know what was thought by Miss Dale."

"Well, you are, perhaps, right, Mrs. Dennistoun. She is only a woman, of course, and she may make mistakes. It is astonishing, though, how often she is right. She has a head for business that might do for a Chancellor of the Exchequer. She made me sell out my shares in that Red Gulch—those American investments have most horrible names—just a week before the smash came, all from what she had read in the papers. She knows how to put things together, you see. So I have reason to be grateful to her, for my part."

"And what persuaded you, here at Windyhill, a quiet clergyman, to put money in any Red Gulch? It is a horrible name!"

"Oh, it was Mary, I suppose," said Mr. Hudson. "She is always looking out for new investments. She said we should all make our fortunes. We did not, unfortunately. But she is so clever, she got us out of it with only a very small loss indeed."

"No doubt she is very clever. I wish, though, that she would let us know definitely on what ground——"

"Oh, there is no ground," cried the Rector. "Now that I have seen Mr. Compton I am certain of it. I said to her before I left the Rectory, 'Now, my dear Mary, I am going like a lamb to the slaughter. I have no reason to give if Mrs. Dennistoun should ask me, and you have no reason to give. And she will probably put me to the door.' If I said that before I started, you may fancy how much more I feel it now, when I have made Mr. Compton's acquaintance. A fine aristocratic face, and all the ease of high breeding. There are only three lives—and those not very good ones—between him and the title, I believe?"

"Two robust brothers, and an invalid who will probably outlive them all; that is, I believe, the state of the case."

"Dear me, what a pity!" said the Rector, "for our little Elinor would have made a sweet little Countess. She would grow a noble lady, like the one in Mr. Tennyson's poem. Well, now I must be going, and I am extremely glad to have been so lucky as to come in just in time. It has been the greatest pleasure to me to see them together—such a loving couple. Dear me, like what one reads about, or remembers in old days, not like the commonplace pairs one has to do with now."

Mrs. Dennistoun accompanied the Rector to the garden gate. She was half inclined to laugh and half to be angry, and in neither mood did Mr. Hudson's insinuations which he made so innocently have much effect upon her mind. But when she took leave of him at the gate and came slowly back among her brilliant flower-beds, pausing here and there mechanically to pick off a withered leaf or prop up the too heavy head of a late rose; her mind began to take another turn. She had always been conscious of an instinctive suspicion in respect to her daughter's lover. Probably only, she said to herself, because he was her daughter's lover, and she was jealous of the new devotion that withdrew from her so completely the young creature who had been so fully her own. That is a hard trial for a woman to undergo. It is only to be borne when she, too, is fascinated by her future son-in-law, as happens in some fortunate cases. Otherwise, a woman with an only child is an alarming critic to encounter. She was not fascinated at all by Phil. She was disappointed in Elinor, and almost thought her child not so perfect as she had believed, when it proved that she could be fascinated by this man. She disliked almost everything about him—his looks, the very air which the Rector thought so aristocratic, his fondness for Elinor, which was not reverential enough to please the mother, and his indifference, nay, contempt, for herself, which was not calculated to please any woman. She had been roused into defence of him in anger at the interference, and at the insinuation which had no proof; but as that anger died away, other thoughts came into her mind. She began to put the broken facts together which already had roused her to suspicion: his sudden arrival, so unexpected; walking from the station—a long, very long walk—carrying his own bag, which was a thing John Tatham did, but not like Phil Compton. And then she remembered, suddenly, his anxiety about the carriage on the distant road, his care to place himself where he could see it. She had thought with a little scorn that this was a proof of his frivolity, of the necessity of seeing people, whoever these people might be. But now there began to be in it something that could have a deeper meaning. For whom was he looking? Who might be coming? Stories she had heard of fugitives from justice, of swindlers taking refuge in the innocence of their families, came up into her mind. Could it be possible that Elinor's pure name could be entangled in such a guilty web as this?



CHAPTER XI.

"Funny old poop!" said Compton. "And that is your Rector, Nell. I shall tell Dick there's rare fun to be had in that house: but not for me. I know what I shall be thinking of all the time I'm there. Odious little Nell! to interfere like this with a fellow's fun. But I say, who's that woman who knows me or my family?—much good may it do her, as I said before. Tell me, Nell, did she speak ill of me?"

"Oh, Phil, how could you ask? or what would it matter if she spoke ever so ill?"

"She did then," he said with a graver face. "Somebody was bound to do it. And what did she say?"

"Oh, what does it matter, Phil? I don't remember; nothing of any consequence. We paid no attention, of course, neither mamma nor I."

"That was plucky of the old girl," said Compton. "I didn't suppose you would give ear, my Nell. Ain't so sure about her. If I'd been your father, my pet, I should never have given you to Phil Compton. And that's the fact: I wonder if the old lady would like to reconsider the situation now."

"Phil!" said Elinor, clinging to his arm.

"Perhaps it would be best for you if you were to do so, Nell, or if she were to insist upon it. Eh! You don't know me, my darling, that's the fact. You're too good to understand us. We're all the same, from the old governor downwards—a bad lot. I feel a kind of remorseful over you, child, to-day. That rosy old bloke, though he's a snob, makes a man think of innocence somehow. I do believe you oughtn't to marry me, Nell."

"Oh, Phil! what do you mean? You cannot mean what you say."

"I suppose I don't, or I shouldn't say it, Nell. I shouldn't certainly, if I thought you were likely to take my advice. It's a kind of luxury to tell you we're a bad lot, and bid you throw me over, when I know all along you won't."

"I should think not indeed," she said, clinging to him and looking up in his face. "Do you know what my cous—I mean a friend, said to me on that subject?"

"You mean your cousin John, whom you are always quoting. Let's hear what the fellow said."

"He said—that I wasn't a girl to put up with much, Phil. That I wasn't one of the patient kind, that I would not bear—— I don't know what it was I would not bear; but you see you must consider my defects, which you can understand well enough, whether I can understand yours or not."

"That you could not put up with—that you could not bear? that meant me, Nell. He had been talking to you on the same subject, me and my faults. Why didn't you listen to him? I suppose he wanted you to have him instead of me."

"Phil! how dare you even think of such a thing? It is not true."

"Wasn't it? Then he is a greater fool than I took him for, and his opinion's no good. So you're a spitfire, are you? Can't put up with anything that doesn't suit you? I don't know that I should have found that out."

"I am afraid though that it is true," she said, half-laughingly looking up at him. "Perhaps you will want to reconsider too."

"If you don't want it any more than I want it, Nell—— What's that?" he cried hastily, changing his expression and attitude in a moment. "Is that one of your neighbours at the gate?"

Elinor looked round, starting away a little from his side, and saw some one—a man she had never seen before—approaching along the path. She was just about to say she did not know who it was when Phil, to her astonishment, stepped past her, advancing to meet the newcomer. But as he did so he put out his hand and caught her as he passed, leading her along with him.

"Mind what I said, and stick to me," he said, in a whisper; then—

"Stanfield!" he cried with an air of perfect ease and cordiality, yet astonishment. "I thought it looked like you, but I could not believe my eyes."

"Mr. Compton!" said the other. "So you are here. I have been hunting after you all over the place. I heard only this morning this was a likely spot."

"A very likely spot!" said Phil. "I suppose you know the good reason I have for being in these parts. Elinor, this is Mr. Stanfield, who has to do with our company, don't you know. But I say, Stanfield, what's all this row in the papers? Is it true that Brown's bolted? I should have taken the first train to see if I could help; but my private affairs are most urgent just at this moment, as I suppose you know."

"I wish you had come," said the other; "it would have looked well, and pleased the rest of the directors. There has been some queer business—some of the books abstracted or destroyed, we can't tell which, and no means of knowing how we stand."

"Good Heavens!" said Phil, "to cover that fellow's retreat."

"It you mean Brown, it was not he. They were all there safe enough after he was gone; somebody must have got in by night and made off with them, some one that knew all about the place; the watchman saw a light, but that's all. It's supposed there must have been something compromising others besides Brown. He could not have cheated the company to such an extent by himself."

"Good Heavens!" cried Phil again in natural horror; "I wish I had followed my impulse and gone up to town straight: but it was very vague what was in the papers; I hoped it might not have been our place at all. And I say, Stanfield—who's the fellow they suspect?" Elinor had disengaged herself from Compton's arm; she perceived vaguely that the stranger paused before he replied, and that Phil, facing him with a certain square attitude of opposition which affected her imagination vaguely, though she did not understand why—was waiting with keen attention for his reply. She said, a little oppressed by the situation, "Phil, perhaps I had better go."

"Don't go," he said; "there's nothing secret to say. If there's anyone suspected it must very soon be known."

"It's difficult to say who is suspected," said the stranger, confused. "I don't know that there's much evidence. You've been in Scotland?"

"Yes, till the other day, when I came down here to see——" He paused and turned upon Elinor a look which gave the girl the most curious incomprehensible pang. It was a look of love; but, oh! heaven, was it a look called up that the other man might see? He took her hand in his, and said lightly yet tenderly, "Let's see, what day was it? the sixth, wasn't it the sixth, Nell?"

A flood of conflicting thoughts poured through Elinor's mind. What did it mean? It was yesterday, she was about to say, but something stopped her, something in Phil's eye—in the touch of his hand. There was something warning, almost threatening, in his eye. Stand by me; mind you don't contradict me; say what I say. All these things which he had repeated again and again were said once more in the look he gave her. "Yes," she said timidly, with a hesitation very unlike Elinor, "it was the sixth." She seemed to see suddenly as she said the words that calendar with the date hanging in the hall: the big 6 seemed to hang suspended in the air. It was true, though she could not tell how it could be so.

"Oh," said Stanfield, in a tone which betrayed a little surprise, and something like disappointment, "the sixth? I knew you had left Scotland, but we did not know where you had gone."

"That's not to be wondered at," said Phil, with a laugh, "for I should have gone to Ireland, to tell the truth; I ought to have been there now. I'm going to-morrow, ain't I, Nell? I had not a bit of business to be here. Winding up affairs in the bachelor line, don't you know; but I had to come on my way west to see this young lady first. It plays the deuce and all with one's plans when there's such a temptation in the way."

"You could have gone from Scotland to Ireland," said Stanfield, gravely, "without coming to town at all."

"Very true, old man. You speak like a book. But, as you perceive, I have not gone to Ireland at all; I am here. Depends upon your motive, I suppose, which way you go."

"It is a good way roundabout," said the other, without relaxing the intent look on his face.

"Well," said Phil, "that's as one feels. I go by Holyhead wherever I may be—even if I had nowhere else to go to on the way."

"And Mr. Compton got here on the sixth?—this is the eighth," said the stranger, pointedly. He turned to Elinor, and it seemed to the girl that his eyes, though they were not remarkable eyes, went through and through her. He spoke very slowly, with a curious meaning. "But it was on the sixth, you say, that he got here?"

That big 6 on the calendar stood out before her eyes; it seemed to cover all the man's figure that stood before her. Elinor's heart and mind went through the strangest convulsion. Was it false—was it true? What was she saying? What did it all mean? She repeated mechanically, "It was on the sixth," and then she recovered a kind of desperate courage, and throwing off the strange spell that seemed to be upon her, "Is there any reason," she asked, suddenly, with a little burst of impatience, looking from one to another, "why it should not be the sixth, that you repeat it so?"

"I beg your pardon," said the stranger, visibly startled. "I did not mean to imply—only thought——Pray, Mr. Compton, tell the lady I had no intention of offending. I never supposed——"

Phil's laugh, loud and clear, rang through the stillness of the afternoon. "He's so used to fibs, he thinks everybody's in a tale," said Phil, "but I can assure you he is a very good fellow, and a great friend of mine, and he means no harm, Nell."

Elinor made Mr. Stanfield an extremely dignified bow. "I ought to have gone away at once, and left you to talk over your business," she said, turning away, and Phil did not attempt to detain her. Then the natural rural sense of hospitality came over Elinor. She turned back to find the two men looking after her, standing where she had left them. "I am sure," she said, "that mamma would wish me to ask the gentleman if he would stay to dinner—or at least come in with you, Phil, to tea."

Mr. Stanfield took off his hat with anxious politeness, and exclaimed hastily that he must go back to town by the next train, and that the cab from the station was waiting to take him. And then she left them, and walked quietly away. She was almost out of hearing before they resumed their conversation; that is, she was beyond the sound, not of their voices, but of what they said. The murmur of the voices was still audible when she got to her favourite seat on the side of the copse looking down the combe. It was a very retired and silent place, not visible from either the cottage or the garden. And there Elinor took refuge in the quiet and hush of the declining day. She was in a great tremor of agitation and excitement as she sat down upon the rustic seat—so great a tremor that she had scarcely been able to walk steadily down the roughly-made steps—a tremor which had grown with every step she took. She did not in the least understand the transaction in which she had been engaged. It was something altogether strange to her experiences, without any precedent in her life. What was it she had been called upon to do? What had she said, and why had she been made to say it? Her heart beat so that she put her two hands upon it crossed over her breast to keep it down, lest it should burst away. She had the sensation of having been brought before some tribunal, put suddenly to the last shift, made to say—what, what? She was so bewildered that she could not tell. Was it the truth, said with the intention to deceive—was it——? She could not tell. There was that great numeral wavering in the air, stalking along with her like a ghost. 6—. She had read it in all innocence, they had all read it, and nobody had said it was wrong. No one was very careful about the date in the cottage. If it was right, if it was wrong, Elinor could not tell. But yet somehow she was conscious that the man to whom she had spoken had been deceived. And Phil! and Phil! what had he meant, adjuring her to stick to him, to stand by him, not to contradict him? Elinor's mind was in such a wild commotion that she could not answer these inquiries. She could not feel that she had one solid step of ground to place herself upon in the whirlwind which swept her about and about. Had she—lied? And why had he asked her to lie? And what, oh, what did it all mean?

One thing that at last appeared to her in the chaos which seemed like something solid that she could grasp at was that Phil had never changed in his aspect. The other man had been very serious, staring at her as if to intimidate her, like a man who had something to find out; but Phil had been as careless, as indifferent, as he appeared always to be. He had not changed his expression. It is true there was that look in which there was at once an entreaty and a command—but only she had seen that, and perhaps it was merely the emotion, the excitement, the strange feeling of having to face the world for him, and say——what, what? Was it simply, the truth, nothing but the truth, or was it—— Again Elinor's mind began to whirl. It was the truth: she could see now that big 6 on the calendar distinct as the sunshine. And yet it was only yesterday—and there was 8 this morning. Had she gone through an intervening dream for a whole day without knowing it; or had she, Elinor—she who would not have done it to save her life—told—a lie for Phil? And why should he want her to tell a lie?

Elinor got up from her seat, and stood uncertain, with a cold dew on her forehead, and her hands clasping and holding each other. Should she go back to them and say there must be some mistake—that though she had said the truth it was not true, that there was some mistake, some dreadful mistake! There was no longer any sound of voices where she was. The whole incident seemed to have died out. The sudden commotion of Phil's visit and everything connected with it had passed away. She was alone in the afternoon, in the hush of nature, looking over the combe, listening to the rustle of the trees, hearing the bees drone homeward. Had Phil ever been here at all? Had he watched the distant road winding over the slopes for some one whom he had expected to come after him all the time? Had he ever told her to stand by him? to say what he said, to back him up? Had there ever been another man standing with that big 6 wavering between her and him like a ghost? Had all that been at all, or was it merely a foolish dream? And ought she to go back now, and find the man before he disappeared, and tell him it was all true, yet somehow a dreadful, dreadful mistake?

Elinor sat down again abruptly on her seat, and put her handkerchief to her forehead and pushed back the damp clusters of her hair, turning her face to the wind to get a little refreshment and calm, if that were possible. She heard in the sunny distance behind her, where the garden and the peaceful house lay in the light, the clang of the gate, a sound which could not be mistaken. The man then had gone—if there was anything to rectify in what she said it certainly could not be rectified now—he was gone. The certainty came to her with a feeling of relief. It had been horrible to think of standing before the two men again and saying—what could she have said? She remembered now that it was not her assertion alone, but that it all hung together, a whole structure of incidents, which would be put wrong if she had said it was a mistake—a whole account of Phil's time, how it had been passed—which was quite true, which he had told them on his arrival; how he had been going to Ireland, and had stopped, longing for a glimpse of her, his bride, feeling that he must have her by him, see her once again before he came for her to fetch her away. He had told the ladies at the cottage the very same, and of course it was true. Had he not come straight from Scotland with his big bundle of game, the grouse and partridges which had already been shared with all the friends about? Was he not going off to Ireland to-morrow to fulfil his first intention? It was all quite right, quite true, hanging perfectly together—except that curious falling out of a day. And then again Elinor's brain swam round and round. Had he been two days at the cottage instead of one, as he said? Was it there that the mistake lay? Had she been in such a fool's paradise having him there, that she had not marked the passage of time—had it all been one hour of happiness flying like the wind? A blush, partly of sweet shame to think that this was possible, that she might have been such a happy fool as to ignore the divisions of night and day, and partly of stimulating hope that such might be the case, a wild snatch at justification of herself and him flushed over her from head to foot, wrapping her in warmth and delight; and then this all faded away again and left her as in ashes—black and cold. No! everything, she saw, now depended upon what she had been impelled to say; the whole construction, Phil's account of his time, his story of his doings—all would have fallen to pieces had she said otherwise. Body and soul, Elinor felt herself become like a machine full of clanging wheels and beating pistons, her heart, her pulses, her breath, all panting, beating, bursting. What did it mean? What did it mean? And then everything stood still in a horrible suspense and pause.

She began to hear voices again in the distance and raised her head, which she had buried in her hands—voices that sounded so calmly in the westering sunshine, one answering another, everything softened in the golden outdoor light. At first as she raised herself up she thought with horror that it was the man, the visitor whom she had supposed to be gone, returning with Phil to give her the opportunity of contradicting herself, of bringing back that whirlwind of doubt and possibility. But presently her excited senses perceived that it was her mother who was walking calmly through the garden talking with Phil. There was not a tone of excitement in the quiet voices that came gradually nearer and nearer, till she could hear what they were saying. It was Phil who was speaking, while her mother now and then put in a word. Elinor did not wish on ordinary occasions for too many private talks between her mother and Phil. They rubbed each other the wrong way, they did not understand each other, words seemed to mean different things in their comprehension of them. She knew that her lover would laugh at "the old girl," which was a phrase which offended Elinor deeply, and Mrs. Dennistoun would become stiffer and stiffer, declaring that the very language of the younger generation had become unintelligible to her. But to hear them now together was a kind of anodyne to Elinor, it stayed and calmed her. The cold moisture dried from her forehead. She smoothed her hair instinctively with her hand, and put herself straight in mind as she did with that involuntary action in outward appearance, feeling that no sign of agitation, no trouble of demeanour must meet her mother's eye. And then the voices came so near that she could hear what they were saying. They were coming amicably together to her favourite retreat.

"It's a very queer thing," said Phil, "if it is as they think, that somebody went there the night before last and cleared off the books. Well, not all the books, some that are supposed to contain the secret transactions. Deucedly cleverly done it must have been, if it was done at all, for nobody saw the fellow, or fellows, if there were more than one——"

"Why do you doubt?" said Mrs. Dennistoun. "Is there any way of accounting for it otherwise?"

"Oh, a very good way—that Brown, the manager, simply took them with him, as he would naturally do, if he wasn't a fool. Why should he go off and leave papers that would convict him, for the pleasure of involving other fellows, and ruining them too?"

"Are there others, then, involved with him?" Oh, how calm, how inconceivably calm, was Mrs. Dennistoun's voice! Had she been asking the gardener about the slugs that eat the young plants it would have been more disturbed.

"Well, Stanfield seemed to think so. He's a sort of head clerk, a fellow enormously trusted. I shouldn't wonder if he was at the bottom of it himself, they're so sure of him," said Phil, with a laugh. "He says there's a kind of suspicion of two or three. Clumsy wretches they must be if they let themselves be found out like that. But I don't believe it. I believe Brown's alone in it, and that it's him that's taken everything away. I believe it's far the safest way in those kind of dodges to be alone. You get all the swag, and you're in no danger of being rounded on, don't you know—till you find things are getting too hot, and you cut away."

"I don't understand the words you use, but I think I know what you mean," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "How dreadful it is to think that in business, where honesty is the very first principle, there should be such terrible plots and plans as those!"

"'Tis awful, isn't it?" said Phil, with a laugh that seemed to ring all down the combe, and came back in echoes from the opposite slope, where in the distance the cab from the station was seen hastening back towards the railway in a cloud of dust. The laugh was like a trumpet of triumph flung across the distance at the discomfited enemy thus going off drooping in the hurry of defeat. He added, "But you may imagine, even if I had known anything, he wouldn't have got much out of me. I didn't know anything, however, I'm very glad to say."

"That is always the best," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with a certain grave didactic tone. "And here is Elinor, as I thought. When one cannot find her anywhere else she's sure to be found here."



CHAPTER XII.

"Well," said Compton, placing himself beside her, "here you are, Nell; kind of the old lady to bring me, wasn't it? I should never have found you out by myself."

"Has he gone, Phil?" Elinor raised her scared face from her hands, and gave him a piteous look.

"Why, Nell! you are trembling like a leaf. Was it frightened, my pretty pet, for Stanny? Stanny's gone off with his tail between his legs. Not a bit of starch left in him. As limp a lawyer as ever you saw."

"Was he a lawyer?" she said, not knowing why she said it, for it mattered nothing at all to Elinor what the man was.

"Not exactly; and yet, I suppose, something of the kind. He is the one that knows about law points, and such things. But now he's as quiet as a lamb, thanks to you."

"Phil," she cried, "what did you make me say? I don't know what I have done. I have done something dreadful—deceived the man, as good as told him a lie."

"You told him the truth," said Phil, with a laugh, "in the most judgmatical way. You stuck to it like a—woman. There's nothing like a woman for sticking to a text. You didn't say a word too much. And I say, Nell, that little defiant bit of yours—'Was there any reason why it shouldn't be the sixth?' was grand. That was quite magnificent, my pet. I never thought you had such spirit in you."

"Oh, Phil," she cried, "why did you make me say it? What was it I said? I don't know; I don't understand a bit. Whatever it was, I know that it was wrong. I deceived the man."

"That's not so great a sin," he said. "I've known worse things done. Put an old reynard off the scent to save his prey. I don't see what's wrong in that, especially as the innocent chicken to be saved was your own poor old Phil."

"Phil, Phil," she cried, "what could that man have done to you? What had put you in his power? You have made me lose all my innocence. I have got horrible things in my head. What could he have done to you that you made me tell a lie?"

"What lie did I make you tell? be reasonable; I did arrive on the sixth, you know that just as well as I do. Don't you really remember the calendar in the hall? You saw it, Nell, as well as I."

"I know, I know," she cried, putting her hands up to her eyes, "I see it everywhere staring at me, that big, dreadful 6. But how is it the 8th now? There is something in it—something I don't understand."

He laughed loudly and long: one of those boisterous laughs which always jarred upon Elinor. "I don't in the least mind how it was," he said. "It was, and that's quite enough for me; and let it be for you too, Nell. I hope you're not going to search into the origin of things like this; we've quite enough to do in this world to take things as they come."

"Oh, Phil! if at least I could understand—I don't understand: or if I had not been made to say what is so mysterious—what must be false."

"Hush, Nell; how could it be false when you saw with your own eyes it was true? Now let us be done with this, my darling. The incident is terminated, as the French say. I came here as fast as I could come to have a good laugh with you over it, and lo! you're nearer crying. Why should you have Stanny on your conscience, Nell? a fellow that would like no better than to hang me if he could get the chance."

"But Phil, Phil—oh, tell me, what could this man have done to you? Why are you afraid of him? Why, why have you made me tell him——"

"Now, Nell, no exaggerated expression. It was a fact you told him, according to the best of evidence; and what he could have done to me is just this—he might have given me a deal of trouble, and put off our marriage. I should have had to go back to town, and my time would have been taken up with finding out about those books, and our marriage would have been put off; that's what he could have done."

"Is that all?" cried Elinor, "was that all?"

"All!" he said, with that loud laugh again; "you don't mind a bit how you hurt a fellow's pride, and his affections, and all that. Do you mean to say, you hard-hearted little coquette, that you wouldn't mind? I don't believe you would mind! Here am I counting the hours, and you, you little cold puss, you aggravating little——"

"Oh, Phil, don't talk such nonsense. If we were to be separated, for a week or a month, what could that matter, in comparison with saying what wasn't——"

"Hush," he said, putting his hand to her mouth. "It's not nice of you to take it so easily, Nell. I'd tell as many what-d'ye-call-'ems as you like, rather than put it off an hour. Why, feeling apart (and I don't think you've any feeling, you little piece of ice), think how inconvenient it would have been; the people all arriving; the breakfast all ready; the Rector with his surplice on; and no wedding! Fancy the Jew with all her fallals, on the old lady's hands, and your cousin John——"

"I have told you already, Phil, my cousin John will not be there."

"So much the better," he said, with a laugh, "I don't want him to be there—shows his sense, when his nose is put out of joint, to keep out of the way."

"I wish you would understand," she said, with a little vexation, "that John is not put out of joint, as you say in that odious way. He has never been anything more to me, nor I to him, than we are now—like brother and sister."

"The more fool he," said Compton, "to have the chance of a nice girl like you, Nell, and not to go in for it. But I don't believe a bit in the brother and sister dodge."

"We will be just the same all our lives," cried Elinor.

"Not if I know it," said Phil. "I'm an easy-going fellow in most ways, but you'll find I'm an old Turk about you, my little duck of a Nell. No amateur brother for me. If you can't get along with your old Phil, without other adorers——"

"Phil! as if I should ever think or care whether there was another man in the world!"

"Oh, that's going too far," he said, laughing. "I shan't mind a little flirtation. You may have a man or two in your train to fetch and carry, get your shawl for you, and call your carriage, and so forth; but no serious old hand, Nell—nothing to remind you that there was a time when you didn't know Phil Compton." His laugh died away at this point, and for a moment his face assumed that grave look which changed its character so much. "If you don't come to repent before then that you ever saw that fellow's ugly face, Nell——"

"Phil, how could I ever repent? Nobody but you should dare to say such a thing to me!"

"I believe that," he said. "If that old John of yours tried it on—— Well, my pet, he is your old John. You can't change facts, even if you do throw the poor fellow over. Now, here's a new chance for all of them, Nell. I shouldn't wonder a bit if you had another crop of letters bidding you look before you leap. That Rectory woman, what's her name? that knows my family. You'll see she'll have some new story before we're clear of her. They'll never stop blackguarding me, I know, until you're Phil Compton yourself, my beauty. I wish that day was come. I'm afraid to go off again and leave you, Nell. They'll be putting something into your head, or the old lady's. Let's get it over to-morrow morning, and come to Ireland with me; you've never been there."

"Phil, what nonsense! mamma would go out of her senses."

"My pet, what does it matter? She'd come back to them again as soon as we were gone, and think what a botheration spared her! All the row of receiving people, turning the house upside down. And here I am on the spot. And what do you want with bridesmaids and so forth? You've got all your things. Suppose we walk out to church to-morrow before breakfast, Nell——"

"Phil, you are mad, I think; and why should we do such a thing, scandalizing everybody? But of course you don't mean it. You are excited after seeing that man."

"Excited about Stanny!—not such a fool; Stanny is all square, thanks to—— But what I want is just to take you up in my arms, like this, and run off with you, Nell. Why we should call the whole world to watch us while we take that swing off—into space."

"Phil!"

"So it is, for you, Nell. You don't know a bit what's going to happen. You don't know where I'm going to take you, and what I'm going to do with you, you little innocent lamb in the wolf's grip. I want to eat you up, straight off. I shall be afraid up to the last moment that you'll escape me, Nell."

"I did not know that you were so fond of innocence," said Elinor, half afraid of her lover's vehemence, and trying to dispel his gravity with a laugh. "You used to say you did not believe in the ingenue."

"I believe in you," he said, with an almost fierce pressure of her arm; then, after a pause, "No, I don't believe in women at all, Nell, only you. They're rather worse than men, which is saying a good deal. What would the Jew care if we were all drawn and quartered; so long as she had all her paraphernalia about her and got everything she wanted? For right-down selfishness commend me to a woman. A fellow may have gleams of something better about him, like me, warning you against myself."

"It is a droll way of warning me against yourself to want to carry me off to-morrow."

"It's all the same thing," he said. "I've warned you that those old hags are right, and I'm not good enough for you, not fit to come near you, Nell. But if the sacrifice is to be, let's get it over at once, don't let us stand and think of it. I'm capable of jilting you," he said, "leaving you plante la, all out of remorse of conscience; or else just catching you up in my arms, like this, and carrying you off, never to be seen more."

"You are very alarming," said Elinor. "I don't know what you mean. You can be off with your bargain if you please, Phil; but you had better make up your mind at once, so that mamma may countermand her invitations, and stop Gunter from sending the cake."

(It was Gunter who was the man in those days. I believe people go to Buszard now.)

He gave her again a vehement hug, and burst into a laugh. "I might jilt you, Nell; such a thing is on the cards. I might leave you in the lurch at the church door; but when you talk of countermanding the cake, I can't face that situation. Society would naturally be up in arms about that. So you must take your chance like the other innocents. I'll eat you up as gently as I can, and hide my tusks as long as it's possible. Come on, Nell, don't let us sit here and get the mopes, and think of our consciences. Come and see if that show is in the village. Life's better than thinking, old girl."

"Do you call the show in the village, life?" she said, half pleased to rouse him, half sorry to be thus carried away.

"Every show is life," said Phil, "and everywhere that people meet is better than anywhere where you're alone. Mind you take in that axiom, Nell. It's our rule of life, you know, among the set you're marrying into. That's how the Jew gets on. That's how we all get on. By this time next year you'll be well inured into it like all the rest. That's what your Rector never taught you, I'll be bound; but you'll see the old fellow practises it whenever he has a chance. Why, there they begin, tootle-te-too. Come on, Nell, and don't let us lose the fun."

He drew her along hastily, hurrying while the flute and the drum began to perform their parts. Sound spreads far in that tranquil country, where no railway was visible, and where the winds for the moment were still. It was Pan's pipes that were being played, attracting a few stragglers from the scattered houses. Within a hundred yards from the church, at the corner of four roads, stood the Bull's Head, with a cottage or two linked on to its long straggling front. And this was all that did duty for a village at Windyhill. The Rectory stood back in its own copse, surrounded by a growth of young birches and oak near the church. The Hills dwelt intermediate between the Bull's Head and the ecclesiastical establishment. The school and schoolmaster's house were behind the Bull. The show was surrounded by the children of the place, who looked on silent with ecstasy, while a burly showman piped his pipes and beat his drum. A couple of ostlers, with their shirt-sleeves rolled up to their shoulders, and one of them with a pail in his hand, stood arrested in their work. And in the front of the spectators was Alick Hudson, a sleepy-looking youth of twenty, who started and took his hands out of his pockets at sight of Elinor. Mr. Hudson himself came walking briskly round the corner, swinging his cane with the air of a man who was afraid of being too late.

"Didn't I tell you?" said Compton, pressing Elinor's arm.

As the tootle-te-too went on, other spectators appeared—the two Miss Hills, one putting on her hat, the other hastily buttoning her jacket as they hurried up. "Oh, you here, Elinor! What fun! We all run as if we were six years old. I'm going to engage the man to come round and do it opposite Rosebank to amuse mother. She likes it as much as any of us, though she doesn't see very well, poor dear, nor hear either. But we must always consider that the old have not many amusements," said the elder Miss Hill.

"Though mother amuses herself wonderfully with her knitting," said Miss Sarah. "There's a sofa-cover on the stocks for you, Elinor."

It appeared to be only at this moment that the sisters became aware of the presence of "the gentleman" by whom Elinor stood. They had been too busy with their uncompleted toilettes to observe him at first. But now that Miss Hill's hat was settled to her satisfaction, and the blue veil tied over her face as she liked it to be, and Miss Sarah had at last succeeded, after two false starts, in buttoning her jacket straight, their attention was released for other details. They both gave a glance over Elinor at the tall figure on the other side, and then looked at each other with a mutual little "Oh!" and nod of recognition. Then Miss Hill took the initiative as became her dignity. "I hope you are going to introduce us to your companion, Elinor," she said. "Oh, Mr. Compton, how do you do? We are delighted to make your acquaintance, I am sure. It is charming to have an opportunity of seeing a person of so much importance to us all, our dear Elinor's intended. I hope you know what a prize you are getting. You might have sought the whole country over and you wouldn't have found a girl like her. I don't know how we shall endure your name when you carry her away."

"Except, indeed," said Miss Sarah, "that it will be Elinor's name too."

"So here we all are again," said the Rector, gazing down tranquilly upon his flock, "not able to resist a little histrionic exhibition—and Mr. Compton too, fresh from the great world. I daresay our good friend Mrs. Basset would hand us out some chairs. No Englishman can resist Punch. Alick, my boy, you ought to be at your work. It will not do to neglect your lessons when you are so near your exam."

"No Englishman, father, can resist Punch," said the lad: at which the two ostlers and the landlord of the Bull's Head, who was standing with his hands in his pockets in his own doorway, laughed loud.

"Had the old fellow there," said Compton, which was the first observation he had made. The ladies looked at him with some horror, and Alick a little flustered, half pleased, half horrified, by this support, while the Rector laughed, but stiffly au bout des levres. He was not accustomed to be called an old fellow in his own parish.

"The old fellows, as you elegantly say, Mr. Compton, have always the worst of it in a popular assembly. Elinor, here is a chair for you, my love. Another one please, Mrs. Basset, for I see Miss Dale coming up this way."

"By Jove," said Compton, under his breath. "Elinor, here's the one that knows society. I hope she isn't such an old guy as the rest."

"Oh, Phil, be good!" said Elinor, "or let us go away, which would be the best."

"Not a bit," he said. "Let's see the show. I say, old man, where are you from last?"

"Down from Guildford ways, guv'nor—awful bad trade; not taken a bob, s' help me, not for three days, and bed and board to get off o' that, me and my mate."

"Well, here is a nice little party for you, my man," said the Rector, "it is not often you have such an audience—nor would I encourage it, indeed, if it were not so purely English an exhibition."

"Master," said the showman, "worst of it is, nobody pays till we've done the show, and then they goes away, and they've got it, don't you see, and we can't have it back once it's in their insides, and there ain't nothink then, neither for my mate nor me."

"Here's for you, old fellow," said Phil. He took a sovereign from his waistcoat pocket and chucked it with his thumbnail into the man's hand, who looked at it with astonished delight, tossed it into the air with a grin, a "thank'ee, gentleman!" and a call to his "mate" who immediately began the ever-exciting, ever-amusing drama. The thrill of sensation which ran through the little assembly at this incident was wonderful. The children all turned from Punch to regard with large open eyes and mouths the gentleman who had given a gold sovereign to the showman. Alick Hudson looked at him with a grin of pleasure, a blush of envy on his face; the Rector, with an expression of horror, slightly shaking his head; the Miss Hills with admiration yet dismay. "Goodness, Sarah, they'll never come now and do it for a shilling to amuse mother!" the elder of the sisters said.

Miss Dale came hurrying up while still the sensation lasted. "Here is a chair for you, Mary," said her brother-in-law, "and the play is just going to begin. I can't help shaking my head when I think of it, but still you must hear what has just happened. Mr. Compton, let me present you to my sister-in-law, Miss Dale. Mr. Compton has made the widow's heart, nay, not the widow's, but the showman's heart to sing. He has presented our friend with a——"

"Mind you," said Phil, from behind Elinor's shoulders, "I've paid the fellow only for two."

At which the showman turned and winked at the Rector. To think that such a piece of audacity could be! A dingy fellow in a velveteen coat, with a spotted handkerchief round his neck, and a battered hat on his unkempt locks, with Pan's pipes at his mouth and a drum tied round his waist—winked at the Rector! Mr. Hudson fell back a step, and his very lips were livid with the indignity. He had to support himself on the back of the chair he had just given to Miss Dale.

"I think we are all forgetting our different positions in this world," he said.

"I ain't," said the showman, "not taking no advantage through the gentleman's noble ways. He's a lord, he is, I don't make no doubt. And we're paid. Take the good of it, Guv'nor, and welcome; all them as is here is welcome. My mate and I are too well paid. A gentleman like that good gentleman, as is sweet upon a pretty young lady, and an open 'eart a-cause of her, I just wish we could find one at every station; don't you, Joe?"

Joe assented, in the person of Mr. Punch, with a horrible squeak from within the tent.

The sensations of Elinor during this episode were peculiar and full of mingled emotion. It is impossible to deny that she was proud of the effect produced by her lover. The sovereign chucked into the showman's hand was a cheap way of purchasing a little success, and yet it dazzled Elinor, and made her eyelids droop and her cheek light up with the glow of pleasure. Amid all the people who would search for pennies, or perhaps painfully and not without reluctance produce a sixpence to reward the humble artists, there was something in the careless familiarity and indifference which tossed a gold coin at them which was calculated to charm the youthful observer. Elinor felt the same mixture of pleasure and envy which had moved Alick Hudson; yet it was not envy, for was not he her own who did this thing which she would have liked to have done herself, overwhelming the poor tramps with delight? Elinor knew, as Alick also did, that it would never have occurred to her to do it. She would have been glad to be kind to the poor men, to give them a good meal, to speak to Basset at the Bull's Head in their favour that they might be taken in for the night and made comfortable, but to open her purse and take a real sovereign from it, a whole potential pound, would not have come into her head. Had such a thing been done, for instance, by the united subscriptions of the party, in case of some peculiarly touching situation, the illness of a wife, the loss of a child, it would have been done solemnly, the Rector calling the men up, making a little speech to them, telling them how all the ladies and gentlemen had united to make up this, and how they must be careful not to spend it unworthily. Elinor thought she could see the little scene, and the Rector improving the occasion. Whereas Phil spun the money through the air into the man's ready hand as if it had been a joke, a trick of agility. Elinor saw that everybody was much impressed with the incident, and her heart went forth upon a flood of satisfaction and content. And it was no premeditated triumph. It was so noble, so accidental, so entirely out of his good heart!

When he hurried her home at the end of the performance, that Mrs. Dennistoun might not be kept waiting, the previous events of the afternoon, and all that happened in the copse and garden, had faded out of Elinor's mind. She forgot Stanfield and the 6th and everything about it. Her embarrassment and trouble were gone. She went in gayly and told her mother all about this wonderful incident. "The Rector was trying for a sixpence. But, mamma, Phil must not be so ready with his sovereigns, must he? We shall have nothing to live upon if he goes chucking sovereigns at every Punch and Judy he may meet."



CHAPTER XIII.

Phil Compton went off next morning by an early train, having in the meanwhile improved the impression of him left upon the family in general, and specially upon Mrs. Dennistoun, to whom he had talked with enthusiasm about Elinor, expressed indeed in terms unusual to her ears, but perhaps only more piquant on that account, which greatly conciliated the mother. "Don't you think," said the Honourable Phil, "because I speak a little free and am not one for tall talk, that I don't know what she is. I've got no poetry in me, but for the freest goer and the highest spirit, without a bit of vice in her, there never was one like Nell. The girls of my set, they're not worthy to tie her shoes—thing I most regret is taking her among a lot that are not half good enough for her. But you can't help your relations, can you? and you have to stick to them for dozens of reasons. There's the Jew, when you know her she's not such a bad sort—not generous, as you may see from what she's given Nell, the old screw: but yet in her own way she stands by a fellow, and we'll need it, not having just the Bank of England behind us. Her husband, old Prestwich, isn't bad for a man that has made his own money, and they've got a jolly house, always something going on."

"But I hope," said Mrs. Dennistoun, "that as soon as these autumn visits are over you will have a house of your own."

"Oh, that!" said Compton, with a wave of his hand, which left it in some doubt whether he was simply throwing off the suggestion, or treating it as a foregone conclusion of which there could be no doubt. "Nell," he went on, "gets on with the Jew like a house on fire—you see they don't clash. Nell ain't one of the mannish sort, and she doesn't flirt—at least not as far as I've seen——"

"I should hope not, indeed," said Mrs. Dennistoun.

"Oh, I'm not one of your curmudgeons. Where's the harm? But she don't, and there's an end of it. She keeps herself to herself, and lets the Jew go ahead, and think she's the attraction. And she'll please the old lord down to the ground. For he's an old-fashioned old coon, and likes what he calls tenue, don't you know: but the end is, there ain't one of them that can hold a candle to Nell. And I should not wonder a bit if she made a change in the lot of us. Conversion of a family by the influence of a pious wife, don't you know. Sort of thing that they make tracts out of. Capital thing, it would be," said Phil, philosophically, "for some of us have been going a pace——"

"Mr. Compton," said Mrs. Dennistoun, solemnly, "I don't understand very well what you mean by these phrases. They may be much more innocent than they seem to a country lady's ears. But I implore you to keep my Elinor clear of anything that you call going the pace. It must mean something very unlike her, whatever it means. She has been used to a very quiet, orderly life. Don't hurry her off into a whirl of society, or among noisy gay people. Indeed I can assure you that the more you have her to herself the more you will be happy in her. She is the brightest companion, the most entertaining—— Oh, Mr. Compton!"

"I think it's about time, now, mater, to call me Phil."

She smiled, with the tears in her eyes, and held out her hand. "Philip, then," she said, "to make a little difference. Now remember what I say. It is only in the sacredness of her home that you will know what is in Elinor. One is never dull with her. She has her own opinions—her bright way of looking at things—as you know. It is, perhaps, a strange thing for a mother to say, but she will amuse you, Philip; she is such company. You will never be dull with Elinor: she has so much in her, which will come out in society, it is true, but never so brightly as between you two alone."

This did not seem to have quite the effect upon the almost-bridegroom which the mother intended. "Perhaps" (she said to herself), "he was a little affected by the thought" (which she kept so completely out of the conversation) "of the loss she herself was about to undergo." At all events, his face was not so bright as in the vision of that sweet prospect held before him it ought to have been.

"The fact is," he said, "she knows a great deal more than I do, or ever will. It's she that will be the one to look blue when she finds herself alone with a fool of a follow that doesn't know a book from a brick. That's the thing I'm most afraid—— As for society, she can have her pick of that," he added, brightening up, "I'll not bind her down."

"You may be sure she'll prefer you to all the world."

He shrugged his shoulders a little.

"They say it's always a leap in the dark," he said, "for how's she to know the sort of fellow I am with what she sees of me here? But I promise you I'll do my best to take her in, and keep her in that delusion, for her good—making believe to be all that's virtuous: and perhaps not a bad way—some of it may stick. Come, mater, don't look so horrified. I'm not of the Cousin John sort, but there may be something decent in me after all."

"I am sure," said Mrs. Dennistoun, "that you will try to make her happy, Philip." She was crying by this time, which was a thing very odious to Phil. He took her by both hands and gave her a hearty kiss, which was a thing for which she was not at all prepared.

"I'll do by her——" he said, with a murmur which sounded like an oath, "as well as I know how."

Perhaps this was not the very greatest comfort to her mother, but it was the best she was at all likely to get from a man so entirely different in all ways from her own species. She had her cry out quietly while he went off to get his bag. The pony carriage was at the door in which Elinor was to drive him to the station, and a minute after Mrs. Dennistoun heard his voice in the hall calling to his Nell, his old girl, in terms which went against all the mother's prejudices of soft and reverent speech. To have her carefully-trained child, her Elinor, whom every one had praised and honoured, her maiden-princess so high apart from all such familiarity, addressed so, gave the old-fashioned lady a pang. It meant nothing but love and kindness, she said to herself. He reverenced Elinor as much as it was in such a man to do. He meant with all his heart to do by her as well as he knew how. It was as fantastic to object to his natural language as it would be to object to a Frenchman speaking French. That was his tongue, the only utterance he knew—— She dried her eyes and went out to the door to see them start. The sun was blazing over all the brilliant autumnal colours Of the garden, though it was still full and brilliant summer in the September morning, and only the asters and dahlias replacing the roses betrayed the turn of the season. And nothing could be more bright than the face of Elinor as she sat in the homely little carriage, with the reins gathered up in her hand. He was going away, indeed, but in a week he was coming back. Philip, as Mrs. Dennistoun now called him with dignity, yet a little beginning of affection, packed up his long limbs as well as he could in the small space. "I believe she'll spill us on the road," he said, "or bring back the shandrydan with a hole in it."

"There is too much of you, Phil," said Elinor, giving the staid pony a quiet touch.

"I should like some of those fellows to see me," he said, "joggled off to market like a basket of eggs; but don't smash me, Nell, on the way."

Mrs. Dennistoun stood on the steps looking after them, or rather, listening after them, for they had soon turned the corner of the house and were gone. She heard them jogging over the stony road, and the sound of their voices in the air for a long time after they were out of sight—the air was so still and so close, nothing in it to break the sound. The atmosphere was all sunshine, not a cloud upon the sky, scarcely a breath stirring over those hill-tops, which had almost the effect of a mountainous landscape, being the highest ground in all the visible space. Along the other side of the combe, where the road became visible, there were gleams of heather brilliant under the dark foliage of the firs. She sat down in the porch and waited to see them pass; there was a sorrowful background to her thoughts, but for the moment she was not actually sad, if perhaps a little forlorn. They had gone away leaving her alone, but yet in an hour or two Elinor was coming back. Time enough to think of the final parting. Next week Elinor would go and would not return. Mrs. Dennistoun held on by both hands to to-day and would not think of that future, near as it was. She waited in a hush of feeling, so near to great commotions of the heart and mind, but holding them at a distance in a suspense of all thought, till the shandrydan appeared in the opening of the road. They were thinking of her, for she saw a gleam of white, the waving of a handkerchief, as the little carriage trundled along the road, and for a moment the tears again blinded her eyes. But Mrs. Dennistoun was very reasonable. She got up from the cottage porch after the pony carriage had passed in the distance, with that determination to make the best of it, which is the inspiration of so many women's lives.

And what a drive the others had through the sunshine—or at least Elinor! You can never tell by what shadows a man's thoughts may be haunted, who is a man of the world, and has had many other things to occupy him besides this vision of love. But the girl had no shadows. The parting which was before her was not near enough to harm as yet, and she was still able to think, in her ignorance of the world, that even parting was much more in appearance than in reality, and that she would always be running home, always going upon long visits brightening everything, instead of saddening. But even had she been going to the end of the world with her husband next week, Elinor would still have been happy to-day. The sunshine itself was enough to go to any one's head, and the pony stepped out so that Phil had the grace to be ashamed of his reflections upon "the old girl." They got to the station too early for the train, and had half an hour's stroll together, with all the railway porters looking on admiring. They all knew Miss Dennistoun from her childhood, and they were interested in her "young man."

"And to think you will be in Ireland to-morrow," said Elinor, "over the sea, with the Channel between us—in another island!"

"I don't see much that's wonderful in that," said Phil, "the boat goes every day."

"Oh, there's nothing wonderful about the boat. Hundreds might go, and I shouldn't mind, but you—— It's strange to think of your going off into a world I don't know at all—and then coming back."

"To take you off to that world you don't know, Nell; and then the time will come when you will know it as well as I do, and more, too; and be able to set me down in my proper place."

"What is your proper place? Your place will always be the same. Phil, you've been so good to me this time; you've made everybody like you so. Mamma—that's the best of all. She was a little—I can't say jealous, that is not the right word, but uncertain and frightened—which just means that she did not know you, Phil; now you've condescended to let yourself be known."

"Have I, Nell? I've had more luck than meaning if that's so."

"'Tis that you've condescended to let yourself be known. A man has such odious pride. He likes to show himself all on the wrong side, to brave people's opinions—as if it was better to be liked for the badness in you than for the goodness in you!"

"What's the goodness in me, Nell? I'd like to know, and then I can have it ready in other emergencies and serve it out as it is wanted."

"Oh, Phil! the goodness in you is—yourself. You can't help being nice when you throw off those society airs. When you are talking with Mariamne and all that set of people——"

"Why can't you call her Jew? life is too short to say all those syllables."

"I don't like you to call her Jew. It's unkind. I don't think she deserves it. It's a sort of an insult."

"Shut up, Nell. It's her name and that's enough. Mar-ry-am-ne! It's a beast of a name to begin with. And do you think any of us has got time to say as much as that for one woman? Oh, I suppose I'm fond of her—as men are of their sisters. She is not a bad sort—mean as her name, and never fond of parting with her money—but stands by a fellow in a kind of a way all the same."

"I'll never call her Jew," said Elinor; "and, Phil, all this wonderful amount of things you have to do is simply—nothing. What do you ever do? It is the people who do things that have time to spare. I know one——"

"Don't come down on me, Nell, again with that eternal Cousin John."

"Phil! I never think of him till you put him into my head. I was thinking of a gentleman who writes——"

"Rubbish, Nell! What have I to do with men that write, or you either? We are none of us of that sort. I do what my set do, and more—for there was this director business; and I should never mind a bit of work that was well paid, like attending Board meetings and so forth, or signing my name to papers."

"What, without reading them, Phil?"

"Don't come over a fellow with your cleverness, Nell! I am not a reader; but I should take good care I knew what was in the papers before I signed them, I can tell you. Eh! you'd like me to slave, to get you luxuries, you little exacting Nell."

"Yes, Phil," she said, "I'd like to think you were working for our living. I should indeed. It seems somehow so much finer—so real a life. And I should work at home."

"A great deal you would work," he said, laughing, "with those scraps of fingers! Let's hear what you would do—bits of little pictures, or impossible things in pincushions, or so forth—and walk out in your most becoming bonnet to force them down some poor shop-keeper's throat?"

"Phil!" she said, "how contemptuous you are of my efforts. But I never thought of either sketches or pincushions. I should work at home to keep the house nice—to look after the servants, and guide the cook, and see that you had nice dinners."

"And warm my slippers by the parlour fire," said Phil. "That's too domestic, Nell, for you and me."

"But we are going to be very domestic, Phil."

"Are we? Not if I knows it; yawn our heads off, and get to hate one another. Not for me, Nell. You'll find yourself up to the eyes in engagements before you know where you are. No, no, old girl, you may do a deal with me, but you don't make a domestic man of Phil Compton. Time enough for that when we've had our fling."

"I don't want any fling, Phil," she said, clinging a little closer to his arm.

"But I do, my pet, in the person of Benedick the married man. Don't you think I want to show all the fellows what a stunning little wife I've got? and all the women I used to flirt with——"

"Did you use to flirt much with them, Phil?"

"You didn't think I flirted with the men, did you? like you did," said Phil, who was not particular about his grammar. "I want to show you off a bit. Nell. When we go down to the governor's, there you can be as domestic as you like. That's the line to take with him, and pays too if you do it well."

"Oh, don't talk as if you were always calculating for your advantage," she said, "for you are not, Phil. You are not a prudent person, but a horrid, extravagant spendthrift; if you go on chucking sovereigns about as you did yesterday."

"Well," he said, laughing, "wasn't it well spent? Didn't I make your Rector open his old eyes, and stop the mouths of the old maids? I don't throw away sovereigns in a general way, Nell, only when there's a purpose in it. But I think I did them all finely that time—had them on toast, eh?"

"You made an impression, if that is what you mean; but I confess I thought you did it out of kindness, Phil."

"To the Punch and Judy? catch me! Sovereigns ain't plentiful enough for that. You little exacting thing, ain't you pleased, when I did it to please you, and get you credit among your friends?"

"It was very kind of you, I'm sure, Phil," she said, very soberly, "but I should so much rather you had not thought of that. A shilling would have done just as well and they would have got a bed at the Bull's Head, and been quite kindly treated. Is this your train coming? It's a little too soon, I think."

"Thanks for the compliment, Nell. It is really late," he said, looking at his watch, "but the time flies, don't it, pet, when you and I are together? Here, you fellow, put my bag in a smoking carriage. And now, you darling, we've got to part; only for a little time, Nell."

"Only for a week," she said, with a smile and a tear.

"Not so long—a rush along the rail, a blow on the sea, and then back again; I shall only be a day over there, and then—bless you, Nell. Good-bye—take care of yourself, my little duck: take care of yourself for me."

"Good-bye," said Elinor, with a little quiver of her lip. A parting at a roadside station is a very abrupt affair. The train stops, the passenger is shoved in, there is a clanging of the doors, and in a moment it is gone. She had scarcely realized that the hour had come before he was whirled off from her, and the swinging line of carriages disappeared round the next curve. She stood looking vaguely after it till the old porter came up, who had known her ever since she was a child.

"Beg your pardon, miss, but the pony is a-waiting," he said. And then he uttered his sympathy in the form of a question:—"Coming back very soon, miss, ain't the gentleman?" he said.

"Oh, yes; very soon," she said, rousing herself up.

"And if I may make bold to say it, miss," said the porter, "an open-hearted gentleman as ever I see. There's many as gives us a threepenny for more than I've done for 'im. And look at what he's give me," he said, showing the half-crown in his hand.

Did he do that from calculation to please her, ungracious girl as she was, who was so hard to please? But he never could have known that she would see it. She walked through the little station to the pony carriage, feeling that all the eyes of the people about were upon her. They were all sympathetic, all equally aware that she had just parted with her lover: all ready to cheer her, if she had given them an opportunity, by reminding her of his early return. The old porter followed her out, and assisted at her ascent into the pony carriage. He said, solemnly, "And an 'andsome gentleman, miss, as ever I see," as he fastened the apron over her feet. She gave him a friendly nod as she drove away.

How dreadful it is to be so sensitive, to receive a wound so easily! Elinor was vexed more than she could say by her lover's denial of the reckless generosity with which she had credited him. To think that he had done it in order to produce the effect which had given her so distinct a sensation of pleasure changed that effect into absolute pain. And yet in the fantastic susceptibility of her nature, there was something in old Judkin's half-crown which soothed her again. A shilling would have been generous, Elinor said to herself, with a feminine appreciation of the difference of small things as well as great, whereas half-a-crown was lavish—ergo, he gave the sovereign also out of natural prodigality, as she had hoped, not out of calculation as he said. She drove soberly home, thinking over all these things in a mood very different from that triumphant happiness with which she started from the cottage with Phil by her side. The sunshine was still as bright, but it had taken an air of routine and commonplace to Elinor. It had come to be only the common day, not the glory and freshness of the morning. She felt herself, as she had never done before, on the edge of a world unknown, where everything would be new to her, where—it was possible—that which awaited her might not be unmixed happiness, might even be the reverse. It is seldom that a girl on the eve of marriage either thinks this or acknowledges to herself that she thinks it. Elinor did so involuntarily, without thinking upon her thought. Perhaps it would not be unmixed happiness. Strange clouds seemed to hang upon the horizon, ready to roll up in tragic darkness and gloom. Oh, no, not tragic, only commonplace, she said to herself; opaqueness, not blackness. But yet it was ominous and lowering, that distant sky.



CHAPTER XIV.

The days of the last week hurried along like the grains of sand out of an hour-glass when they are nearly gone. It is true that almost everything was done—a few little bits of stitching, a few things still to be "got up" alone remaining, a handkerchief to mark with Elinor's name, a bit of lace to arrange, just enough to keep up a possibility of something to do for Mrs. Dennistoun in the blank of all other possibilities—for to interest herself or to occupy herself about anything that should be wanted beyond that awful limit of the wedding-day was of course out of the question. Life seemed to stop there for the mother, as it was virtually to begin for the child; though indeed to Elinor also, notwithstanding her love, it was visible more in the light of a point at which all the known and certain ended, and where the unknown and almost inconceivable began. The curious thing was that this barrier which was placed across life for them both, got somehow between them in those last days which should have been the most tender climax of their intercourse. They had a thousand things to say to each other, but they said very little. In the evening after dinner, whether they went out into the garden together to watch the setting of the young moon, or whether they sat together in that room which had witnessed all Elinor's commencements of life, free to talk as no one else in the world could ever talk to either of them, they said very little to each other, and what they said was of the most commonplace kind. "It is a lovely night; how clear one can see the road on the other side of the combe!" "And what a bright star that is close to the moon! I wish I knew a little more about the stars." "They are just as beautiful," Mrs. Dennistoun would say, "as if you knew everything about them, Elinor." "Are you cold, mamma? I am sure I can see you shiver. Shall I run and get you a shawl?" "It is a little chilly: but perhaps it will be as well to go in now," the mother said. And then indoors: "Do you think you will like this lace made up as a jabot, Elinor?" "You are giving me all your pretty things, though you know you understand lace much better than I do." "Oh, that doesn't matter," Mrs. Dennistoun said hurriedly; "that is a taste which comes with time. You will like it as well as I do when you are as old as I am." "You are not so dreadfully old, mamma." "No, that's the worst of it," Mrs. Dennistoun would say, and then break out into a laugh. "Look at the shadow that handkerchief makes—how fantastic it is!" she cried. She neither cared for the moon, nor for the quaintness of the shadows, nor for the lace which she was pulling into dainty folds to show its delicate pattern—for none of all these things, but for her only child, who was going from her, and to whom she had a hundred, and yet a hundred, things to say: but none of them ever came from her lips.

"Mary Dale has not seen your things, Elinor: she asked if she might come to-morrow."

"I think we might have had to-morrow to ourselves, mamma—the last day all by ourselves before those people begin to arrive."

"Yes, I think so too; but it is difficult to say no, and as she was not here when the others came—— She is the greatest critic in the parish. She will have so much to say."

"I daresay it may be fun," said Elinor, brightening up a little, "and of course anyhow Alice must have come to talk about her dress. I am tired of those bride's-maids' dresses; they are really of so little consequence." Elinor was not vain, to speak of, but she thought it improbable that when she was there any one would look much at the bride's-maids' dresses. For one thing, to be sure, the bride is always the central figure, and there were but two bride's-maids, which diminished the interest; and then—well, it had to be allowed at the end of all, that, though her closest friends, neither Alice Hudson nor Mary Tatham were, to look at, very interesting girls.

"They are of great consequence to them," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with the faintest smile.

"I didn't mean that, of course," said Elinor, with a blush; "only I never should have worried about my own dress, which after all is the most important, as Alice does about hers."

"Which nobody will look at," Mrs. Dennistoun said.

"I did not say that: but to tell the truth, it is a pity for the girls that the men will not quite be, just of their world, you know. Oh, mamma, you know it is not that I think anything of that, but I am sorry for Alice and Mary. Mr. Bolsover and the other gentlemen will not take that trouble which country neighbours, or—or John's friends from the Temple might have done."

"Why do you speak of John's friends from the Temple, Elinor?"

"Mamma! for no reason at all. Why should I? They were the only other men I could think of."

"Elinor, did John ever give you any reason to think——"

"Mamma," cried Elinor again, with double vehemence, her countenance all ablaze, "of course he never did! how could you think such foolish things?"

"Well, my dear," said her mother, "I am very glad he did not; it will prevent any embarrassment between him and you—for I must always believe——"

"Don't, please, oh, don't! it would make me miserable; it would take all my happiness away."

Mrs. Dennistoun said nothing, but she sighed—a very small, infinitesimal sigh—and there was a moment's silence, during which perhaps that sigh pervaded the atmosphere with a sort of breath of what might have been. After a moment she spoke again:

"I hope you have not packed up your ornaments yet, Elinor. You must leave them to the very last, for Mary would like to see that beautiful necklace. What do you think you shall wear on the day?"

"Nothing," said Elinor, promptly. She was about to add, "I have nothing good enough," but paused in time.

"Not my little star? It would look very well, my darling, to fix your veil on. The diamonds are very good, though perhaps a little old-fashioned; you might get them reset. But—your father gave it me like that."

"I would not change it a bit, mamma, for anything in the world."

"Thanks, my dearest. I thought that was how you would feel about it. It is not very big, of course, but it really is very good."

"Then I will wear it, mamma, if it will please you, but nothing else."

"It would please me: it would be like having something from your father. I think we had less idea of ornaments in my day. I cannot tell you how proud I was of my diamond star. I should like to put it in for you myself, Elinor."