from the servant who admitted him
whom it was that he had asked for.

"He asked for master first. But master has not rung for his water yet,
so James told him he was not up. Then he took thought for a while, and
asked could he speak to you, he would wait if you were not at liberty but
that he wished particular to see either master, or you. So James asked
him to sit down in the drawing-room, and he would let you know."

"I must go," thought Ellinor. "I will send him away directly; to come,
thinking of marriage to a house like this--to-day, too!"

And she went down hastily, and in a hard unsparing mood towards a man,
whose affection for her she thought was like a gourd, grown up in a
night, and of no account, but as a piece of foolish, boyish excitement.

She never thought of her own appearance--she had dressed without looking
in the glass. Her only object was to dismiss her would-be suitor as
speedily as possible. All feelings of shyness, awkwardness, or maiden
modesty, were quenched and overcome. In she went.

He was standing by the mantelpiece as she entered. He made a step or two
forward to meet her; and then stopped, petrified, as it were, at the
sight of her hard white face.

"Miss Wilkins, I am afraid you are ill! I have come too early. But I
have to leave Hamley in half an hour, and I thought--Oh, Miss Wilkins!
what have I done?"

For she sank into the chair nearest to her, as if overcome by his words;
but, indeed, it was by the oppression of her own thoughts: she was hardly
conscious of his presence.

He came a step or two nearer, as if he longed to take her in his arms and
comfort and shelter her; but she stiffened herself and arose, and by an
effort walked towards the fireplace, and there stood, as if awaiting what
he would say next. But he was overwhelmed by her aspect of illness. He
almost forgot his own wishes, his own suit, in his desire to relieve her
from the pain, physical as he believed it, under which she was suffering.
It was she who had to begin the subject.

"I received your letter yesterday, Mr. Livingstone. I was anxious to see
you to-day, in order that I might prevent you from speaking to my father.
I do not say anything of the kind of affection you can feel for me--me,
whom you have only seen once. All I shall say is, that the sooner we
both forget what I must call folly, the better."

She took the airs of a woman considerably older and more experienced than
himself. H