adfully about it all. If I only
had gone with her! It was not for want of an invitation, but just my
laziness. I could not be troubled to leave my own house."

"I don't see what difference it would have made had you been with her,
aunt."

"Oh, I should have seen the man: and been able to judge what he was and
his motive, John."

"Elinor is not rich. He could scarcely have had an interested motive."

"There is some comfort in that. I have said that to myself again and
again. He could not have an interested motive. But, oh! I am uneasy!
There is the dressing-bell. I will not keep you any longer, John; but
in the evening, or to-morrow, when we can get a quiet moment----"

The dusk, was now pervading all the house--that summer dusk which
there is a natural prejudice everywhere against cutting short by
lights. He could not see her face, nor she his, as they went out of the
drawing-room together and along the long passage, which led by several
arched doorways to the stairs. John had a room on the ground floor which
was kept for gentlemen visitors, and in which the candles were twinkling
on the dressing-table. He was more than ever thankful as he caught a
glimpse of himself in the vague reflected world of the mirror, with its
lights standing up reflected too, like inquisitors spying upon him, that
there had not been light enough to show how he was looking: for though
he was both a lawyer and a man of the world, John Tatham had not been
able to keep the trouble which his interview with Elinor had caused him
out of his face.

CHAPTER III.

The drawing-room of the cottage was large and low, and had that _faux
air_ of being old-fashioned which is dear to the hearts of superior
people generally. Mrs. Dennistoun and her daughter scarcely belonged to
that class, yet they were, as ladies of leisure with a little taste for
the arts are bound to be, touched by all the fancies of their time,
which was just beginning to adore Queen Anne. There was still, however,
a mixture of luxury with the square settees and spindle-legged cabinets
which were "the fashion:" and partly because that was also "the fashion,"
and partly because on Windyhill even a July evening was sometimes a
little chill, or looked so by reason of the great darkness of the
silent, little-inhabited country outside--there was a log burning on the
fire-dogs (the newest thing in furnishing in those days though now so
common) on the hearth. The log burned as litt