ning light of day. The night was gone.

CHAPTER IX.

IN PERPLEXITIES.

"Look, a horse at the door,
And little King Charles is snarling;
Go back, my lord, across the moor,
You are not her darling."

Eleanor set out early to go home. She would not wait to be sent for.
The walk might set her pulses in motion again perhaps. The fog was
breaking away under the sun's rays, but it had left everything wet; the
morning was excessively chill. There was no grass in her way however,
and Eleanor's thick shoes did not fear the road, nor her feet the three
miles of way. The walk was good. It could not be said to be pleasant;
yet action of any kind was grateful and helpful. She saw not a creature
till she got home.

Home struck her with new sorrow, in the sense of the disappointment she
was going to bring to so many there. She made her own room without
having to speak to anybody; bathed and dressed for breakfast. How grave
her face was, this morning! She could not help that. And she felt that
it grew graver, when entering the breakfast room she found Mr. Carlisle
there.

"What have you done to yourself?" said he after they were seated at the
breakfast table.

"Taken a walk this morning."

"Judicious! in this air, which is like a suspended shower-bath! Where
did you go?"

"On the Wiglands road."

"If I had come in time, I should have taken you up before me, and cut
short such a proceeding. Mrs. Powle, you do not make use of your
authority."

"Seems hardly worth while, when it is on the point of expiring," said
Mrs. Powle blandly, with a smiling face.

"Why Eleanor had to come home," said Julia; "she spent the night in the
village. She could not help walking--unless mamma had sent the carriage
or something for her."

"Spent the night in the village!" said Mr. Carlisle.

"Eleanor took it into her head that she must go to take care of a sick
girl there--the daughter of her nurse. It is great foolishness, I
think, but Eleanor will do it."

"It don't agree with her very well," said Julia. "How you do look,
Eleanor, this morning!"

"She looks very well," said the Squire--"for all I see. Walking won't
hurt her."

What Mr. Carlisle thought he did not say. When breakfast was over he
drew Eleanor off into the library.

"How do you do this morning?" said he stopping to look at her.

"Not very well."

"I came early, to give you a great gallop to the other end of the
moor--where you wished to go the