struggling rebellion which had all been at work, were smothered or at
least kept under by her subdued feeling, and her brow wore an air of
almost shy modesty. She did not see the two faces which were turned
towards her as soon as she appeared, though she saw Mr. Carlisle rise.
She came forward and stood before Lady Rythdale.

The feeling of shyness and of being bound were both rather increased by
all she saw and felt around her. The place was a winter parlour or
sitting-room, luxuriously hung and furnished with red, which made a
rich glow in the air. At one side a glass door revealed a glow of
another sort from the hues of tropical flowers gorgeously blooming in a
small conservatory; on another side of the room, where Lady Rythdale
sat and her son stood, a fire of noble logs softly burned in an ample
chimney. All around the evidences of wealth and a certain sort of power
were multiplied; not newly there but native; in a style of things very
different from Eleanor's own simple household. She stood before the
fire, feeling all this without looking up, her eye resting on the
exquisite mat of Berlin wool on which Lady Rythdale's foot rested. That
lady surveyed her.

"So you have come," she said. "Macintosh said he would bring you."

Eleanor answered for the moment with tact and temper almost equal to
her lover's, "Madam--you know Mr. Carlisle."

How satisfied they both looked, she did not see; but she felt it,
through every nerve, as Mr. Carlisle took her hands and placed her in a
great chair, that she had pleased him thoroughly. He remained standing
beside her, leaning on her chair, watching her varying colour no doubt.
A few commonplaces followed, and then the talk fell to the mother and
son who had some affairs to speak about. Eleanor's eye went to the
glass door beyond which the flowers beckoned her; she longed to go to
them; but though feeling that bands were all round her which were
drawing her and would draw her to be at home in that house, she would
not of her own will take one step that way; she would assume nothing,
not even the right of a stranger. So she only looked at the distant
flowers, and thought, and ceased to hear the conversation she did not
understand. But all this while Lady Rythdale was taking note of her. A
pause came, and Eleanor became conscious that she was a subject of
consideration.

"You will have a very pretty wife, Macintosh," said the baroness
bluntly and benignly.

The rush of colou