you said you could not feel it right to marry. Why don't
you tell me straight out what it is?" He could not help his irritation
betraying itself in his tones and manner of speaking. She bent a little
forward, and looked full into his face, as though to pierce to the very
heart's truth of him. Then she said, as quietly as she had ever spoken
in her life,--"You wish to break off our engagement?"

He reddened and grew indignant in a moment. "What nonsense! Just
because I ask a question and make a remark! I think your illness must
have made you fanciful, Ellinor. Surely nothing I said deserves such an
interpretation. On the contrary, have I not shown the sincerity and
depth of my affection to you by clinging to you through--through
everything?"

He was going to say "through the wearying opposition of my family," but
he stopped short, for he knew that the very fact of his mother's
opposition had only made him the more determined to have his own way in
the first instance; and even now he did not intend to let out, what he
had concealed up to this time, that his friends all regretted his
imprudent engagement.

Ellinor sat silently gazing out upon the meadows, but seeing nothing.
Then she put her hand into his. "I quite trust you, Ralph. I was wrong
to doubt. I am afraid I have grown fanciful and silly."

He was rather put to it for the right words, for she had precisely
divined the dim thought that had overshadowed his mind when she had
looked so intently at him. But he caressed her, and reassured her with
fond words, as incoherent as lovers' words generally are.

By-and-by they sauntered homewards. When they reached the house, Ellinor
left him, and flew up to see how her father was. When Ralph went into
his own room he was vexed with himself, both for what he had said and for
what he had not said. His mental look-out was not satisfactory.

Neither he nor Mr. Wilkins was in good humour with the world in general
at dinner-time, and it needs little in such cases to condense and turn
the lowering tempers into one particular direction. As long as Ellinor
and Miss Monro stayed in the dining-room, a sort of moody peace had been
kept up, the ladies talking incessantly to each other about the trivial
nothings of their daily life, with an instinctive consciousness that if
they did not chatter on, something would be said by one of the gentlemen
which would be distasteful to the other.

As soon as Ralph had shut