, which it had been her custom to place
in his button-hole when he came down to breakfast, he felt as if his
better self was stronger than temptation, and as if he must be an honest
man and honourable lover, even against his wish.

As the day wore on the temptation gathered strength. Mr. Wilkins came
down, and while he was on the scene Ellinor seemed always engrossed by
her father, who apparently cared little enough for all her attentions.
Then there was a complaining of the food, which did not suit the sickly
palate of a man who had drunk hard the night before; and possibly these
complaints were extended to the servants, and their incompleteness or
incapacity was thus brought prominently before the eyes of Ralph, who
would have preferred to eat a dry crust in silence, or to have gone
without breakfast altogether, if he could have had intellectual
conversation of some high order, to having the greatest dainties with the
knowledge of the care required in their preparation thus coarsely
discussed before him. By the time such breakfasts were finished, Ellinor
looked thirty, and her spirits were gone for the day. It had become
difficult for Ralph to contract his mind to her small domestic interests,
and she had little else to talk to him about, now that he responded but
curtly to all her questions about himself, and was weary of professing a
love which he was ceasing to feel, in all the passionate nothings which
usually make up so much of lovers' talk. The books she had been reading
were old classics, whose place in literature no longer admitted of keen
discussion; the poor whom she cared for were all very well in their way;
and, if they could have been brought in to illustrate a theory, hearing
about them might have been of some use; but, as it was, it was simply
tiresome to hear day after day of Betty Palmer's rheumatism and Mrs.
Kay's baby's fits. There was no talking politics with her, because she
was so ignorant that she always agreed with everything he said.

He even grew to find luncheon and Miss Monro not unpleasant varieties to
his monotonous _tete-a-tetes_. Then came the walk, generally to the town
to fetch Mr. Wilkins from his office; and once or twice it was pretty
evident how he had been employing his hours. One day in particular his
walk was so unsteady and his speech so thick, that Ralph could only
wonder how it was that Ellinor did not perceive the cause; but she was
too openly anxious about the heada