le. The room looked as if
it had been made for Eleanor to settle her two life-questions in it.
Accordingly she took them up without delay; but Eleanor's mind that
night was like a kaleidoscope. Images of different people and things
started up, with wearying perversity of change and combination; and the
question, whether she would be a servant of God like her aunt Caxton,
was inextricably twisted up with the other question; whether she could
escape being the baroness of Rythdale and the wife of Mr. Carlisle. And
Eleanor did nothing but tire herself with thinking that night; until
the fire was burnt out and she went to bed. Nevertheless she fell
asleep with a sense of relief more blissful than she had known for
months. She had put a little distance at least between her and her
enemies.

Eleanor had meant to be early next day, but rest had taken too good
hold of her; it was long past early when she opened her eyes. The rays
of the morning sun were peeping in through the lattices. Eleanor sprang
up and threw open, or rather threw back, one of the windows, for the
lattice slid in grooves instead of hanging on hinges. She would never
have found out how to open them, but that one lattice stood slightly
pushed back already. When it was quite out of her way, Eleanor's breath
almost stopped. A view so wild, so picturesque, so rare in its outlines
of beauty, she thought she had never seen. Before her, at some
distance, beyond a piece of broken ground, rose a bare-looking height
of considerable elevation, crowned by an old tower massively
constructed, broken, and ivy-grown. The little track of a footpath was
visible that wound round the hill; probably going up to the tower.
Further beyond, with evidently a deep valley or gorge between, a line
of much higher hills swept off to the left; bare also, and moulded to
suit a painter of weird scenes, yet most lovely, and all seen now in
the fair morning beams which coloured and lighted them and the old
tower together. Nothing else. The road indeed by which she had come
passed close before Eleanor's window; but trees embowered it, though
they had been kept down so as not to hinder this distant view. Eleanor
sat a long while spell-bound before the window.

A noise disturbed her. It was one of the blue jackets bringing a tray
with breakfast. Eleanor eagerly asked if Mrs. Caxton had taken
breakfast; but all she got in return was a series of unintelligible
sounds; however as the girl pointed