fled as she returned home with all
her news to her father. Certainly she had been victorious, certainly
she had achieved her object, certainly she was not unhappy, and yet
she did not feel herself triumphant. Everything would run smooth now.
Eleanor was not at all addicted to the Lydian school of romance; she
by no means objected to her lover because he came in at the door under
the name of Absolute, instead of pulling her out of a window under the
name of Beverley; and yet she felt that she had been imposed upon, and
could hardly think of Mary Bold with sisterly charity. "I did think
I could have trusted Mary," she said to herself over and over again.
"Oh that she should have dared to keep me in the room when I tried to
get out!" Eleanor, however, felt that the game was up, and that she
had now nothing further to do but to add to the budget of news which
was prepared for her father, that John Bold was her accepted lover.

We will, however, now leave her on her way, and go with John Bold to
Plumstead Episcopi, merely premising that Eleanor on reaching home
will not find things so smooth as she fondly expected; two messengers
had come, one to her father and the other to the archdeacon, and
each of them much opposed to her quiet mode of solving all their
difficulties; the one in the shape of a number of _The Jupiter_, and
the other in that of a further opinion from Sir Abraham Haphazard.

John Bold got on his horse and rode off to Plumstead Episcopi; not
briskly and with eager spur, as men do ride when self-satisfied with
their own intentions; but slowly, modestly, thoughtfully, and somewhat
in dread of the coming interview. Now and again he would recur to the
scene which was just over, support himself by the remembrance of the
silence that gives consent, and exult as a happy lover. But even this
feeling was not without a shade of remorse. Had he not shown himself
childishly weak thus to yield up the resolve of many hours of thought
to the tears of a pretty girl? How was he to meet his lawyer?
How was he to back out of a matter in which his name was already so
publicly concerned? What, oh what! was he to say to Tom Towers?
While meditating these painful things he reached the lodge leading up
to the archdeacon's glebe, and for the first time in his life found
himself within the sacred precincts.

All the doctor's children were together on the slope of the lawn,
close to the road, as Bold rode up to the hall door