e mistress
of anything but herself.

Eleanor watched for her mother's coming, but Mrs. Powle was wiser. She
had marked the air of both parties on quitting the drawing-room; and
though doubtless she would have liked a little word revelation of what
she desired to know, she was content to leave things in train. She
judged that Mr. Carlisle could manage his own affairs, and went to bed
well satisfied; while Eleanor, finding that her mother was not coming,
at last laid herself also down to rest, with a mixed feeling of
pleasure and pain in her heart, but vexation towering above all. It
would have been vexation still better grown, if she had known the hint
her mother had given Mr. Carlisle, when that evening he had applied to
her for what news she had for him? Mrs. Powle referred him very
smilingly to Eleanor to learn it; at the same time telling him that
Eleanor had been allowed to run wild--like her sister Julia--till now
she was a little wilful and needed taming.

She looked the character sufficiently well when she came down the next
morning. The colour on her cheek was raised yet, and rich; and
Eleanor's beautiful lips did not unbend to their brilliant mischievous
smile. She was somewhat quick and nervous too about her household
arrangements and orders, which yet Eleanor did not neglect. It was time
then to dress for her ride; and Eleanor dressed, not hurriedly but
carefully, between pleasure and irritation. By what impulse she could
not have told, she pulled the feather from her riding cap. It was a
long, jaunty black feather, that somewhat shaded and softened her face
in riding with its floating play. Her cap now, and her whole dress, was
simplicity itself; but if Eleanor had meant to cheat Mr. Carlisle of
some pleasure, she had misjudged and lost her aim; the close little
unadorned cap but shewed the better her beautiful hair and a face and
features which nobody that loved them could wish even shaded from view.

Mrs. Powle had maintained a discreet silence all the morning;
nevertheless Eleanor was still afraid that she might come to ask
questions, and not enduring to answer them, as soon as her toilet was
finished she fled from her room into the garden. This garden, into
which the old schoolroom opened, was Eleanor's particular property. No
other of the family were ever to be found in it. She had arranged its
gay curves and angles, and worked in it and kept it in great part
herself. The dew still hung on the leaves