piter is a very good fellow."

"I always thought so. Otherwise I should never have consented to have
been one of his satellites, or have been contented to see you doing chief
moon. But you have been with him an hour and a half."

"Since I left him I have walked all round by Bowick Lodge. I had
something to think of before I could talk to you,--something to decide
upon, indeed, before I could return to the house."

"What have you decided?" she asked. Her voice was altogether changed.
Though she was seated in her chair and had hardly moved, her appearance
and her carriage of herself were changed. She still held the cup in her
hand which she had been about to fill, but her face was turned towards
his, and her large brown speaking eyes were fixed upon him.

"Let me have my tea," he said, "and then I will tell you." While he
drank his tea she remained quite quiet, not touching her own, but waiting
patiently till it should suit him to speak. "Ella," he said, "I must tell
it all to Dr. Wortle."

"Why, dearest?" As he did not answer at once, she went on with her
question. "Why now more than before?"

"Nay, it is not now more than before. As we have let the before go by, we
can only do it now."

"But why at all, dear? Has the argument, which was strong when we came,
lost any of its force?"

"It should have had no force. We should not have taken the man's good
things, and have subjected him to the injury which may come to him by our
bad name."

"Have we not given him good things in return?"

"Not the good things which he had a right to expect,--not that
respectability which is all the world to such an establishment as this."

"Let me go," she said, rising from her chair and almost shrieking.

"Nay, Ella, nay; if you and I cannot talk as though we were one flesh,
almost with one soul between us, as though that which is done by one is
done by both, whether for weal or woe,--if you and I cannot feel ourselves
to be in a boat together either for swimming or for sinking, then I think
that no two persons on this earth ever can be bound together after that
fashion. 'Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will
lodge. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee
and me."' Then she rose from her chair, and flinging herself on her knees
at his feet, buried her face in his lap. "Ella," he said, "the only
injury you can do me is to speak of leaving me. And it is an injury whi