ng-stones;
and he declined in order to keep his word to Ellinor, and go to Ford
Bank. But he could not help looking upon himself a little in the light
of a martyr to duty; and perhaps this view of his own merits made him
chafe under his future father-in-law's irritability of manner, which now
showed itself even to him. He found himself distinctly regretting that
he had suffered himself to be engaged so early in life; and having become
conscious of the temptation and not having repelled it at once, of course
it returned and returned, and gradually obtained the mastery over him.
What was to be gained by keeping to his engagement with Ellinor? He
should have a delicate wife to look after, and even more than the common
additional expenses of married life. He should have a father-in-law
whose character at best had had only a local and provincial
respectability, which it was now daily losing by habits which were both
sensual and vulgarising; a man, too, who was strangely changing from
joyous geniality into moody surliness. Besides, he doubted if, in the
evident change in the prosperity of the family, the fortune to be paid
down on the occasion of his marriage to Ellinor could be forthcoming. And
above all, and around all, there hovered the shadow of some unrevealed
disgrace, which might come to light at any time and involve him in it. He
thought he had pretty well ascertained the nature of this possible shame,
and had little doubt it would turn out to be that Dunster's
disappearance, to America or elsewhere, had been an arranged plan with
Mr. Wilkins. Although Mr. Ralph Corbet was capable of suspecting him of
this mean crime (so far removed from the impulsive commission of the past
sin which was dragging him daily lower and lower down), it was of a kind
that was peculiarly distasteful to the acute lawyer, who foresaw how such
base conduct would taint all whose names were ever mentioned, even by
chance, in connection with it. He used to lie miserably tossing on his
sleepless bed, turning over these things in the night season. He was
tormented by all these thoughts; he would bitterly regret the past events
that connected him with Ellinor, from the day when he first came to read
with Mr. Ness up to the present time. But when he came down in the
morning, and saw the faded Ellinor flash into momentary beauty at his
entrance into the dining-room, and when she blushingly drew near with the
one single flower freshly gathered