anything, however, I'm very glad to say."

"That is always the best," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with a certain grave
didactic tone. "And here is Elinor, as I thought. When one cannot find
her anywhere else she's sure to be found here."

CHAPTER XII.

"Well," said Compton, placing himself beside her, "here you are, Nell;
kind of the old lady to bring me, wasn't it? I should never have found
you out by myself."

"Has he gone, Phil?" Elinor raised her scared face from her hands, and
gave him a piteous look.

"Why, Nell! you are trembling like a leaf. Was it frightened, my pretty
pet, for Stanny? Stanny's gone off with his tail between his legs. Not a
bit of starch left in him. As limp a lawyer as ever you saw."

"Was he a lawyer?" she said, not knowing why she said it, for it
mattered nothing at all to Elinor what the man was.

"Not exactly; and yet, I suppose, something of the kind. He is the one
that knows about law points, and such things. But now he's as quiet as a
lamb, thanks to you."

"Phil," she cried, "what did you make me say? I don't know what I have
done. I have done something dreadful--deceived the man, as good as told
him a lie."

"You told him the truth," said Phil, with a laugh, "in the most
judgmatical way. You stuck to it like a--woman. There's nothing like a
woman for sticking to a text. You didn't say a word too much. And I say,
Nell, that little defiant bit of yours--'Was there any reason why it
shouldn't be the sixth?' was grand. That was quite magnificent, my pet.
I never thought you had such spirit in you."

"Oh, Phil," she cried, "why did you make me say it? What was it I said?
I don't know; I don't understand a bit. Whatever it was, I know that it
was wrong. I deceived the man."

"That's not so great a sin," he said. "I've known worse things done. Put
an old reynard off the scent to save his prey. I don't see what's wrong
in that, especially as the innocent chicken to be saved was your own
poor old Phil."

"Phil, Phil," she cried, "what could that man have done to you? What had
put you in his power? You have made me lose all my innocence. I have got
horrible things in my head. What could he have done to you that you made
me tell a lie?"

"What lie did I make you tell? be reasonable; I did arrive on the sixth,
you know that just as well as I do. Don't you really remember the
calendar in the hall? You saw it, Nell, as well as I."

"I know, I know," she cried, putting her hands