The Marriage of Elinor

"I trust you for everything, John; but," added Mrs. Dennistoun, "I wouldn't say anything to Pearson. If you've told him to be a dragon, let him be a dragon still. I am sure you are right, and I will tell Elinor so, and comfort her heart; but we may as well keep a good look out, and our eyes about us, all the same."

"They are sure I am right, but think it better to go on as if I were wrong," John said to himself as he went to dress for dinner. And while he went through this ceremony, he had a great many thoughts – half-impatient, half-tender – of the wonderful ways of women which are so amazing to men in general, as the ways of men are amazing to women, and will be so, no doubt, as long as the world goes on. The strange mixture of the wise and the foolish, the altogether heroic, and the involuntarily fictitious, struck his keen perception with a humourous understanding, and amusement, and sympathy. That Mrs. Dennistoun should pose a little as a sufferer while she was unmitigatedly happy in the possession of Elinor and the child, and be abashed when she was forced to confess how ecstatic was the fearful joy which she snatched in the midst of danger, was strange enough. But that Elinor, at this dreadful crisis of her life, when every bond was rent asunder, and all that is ordinarily called happiness wrecked for ever, should be moved to the kind of rapture he had seen in her face by the reaching out and curling in of those little pink toes in the warm light of the fire, was inconceivable – a thing that was not in any philosophy. She had made shipwreck of her life. She had torn the man whom she loved out of her heart, and fled from his neglect and treachery – a fugitive to her mother's house. And yet as she sat before the fire with this little infant cooing in the warmth – like a puppy or a little pig, or any other little animal you can suggest – this was the thought of the irreverent man – there was a look of almost more than common happiness, of blessedness, in her face. Who can fathom these things? They were at least beyond the knowledge, though not the sympathy, of this very rising member of the bar.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Thus there came a sort of settling down and composure of affairs. Phil Compton and all belonging to him disappeared from the scene, and Elinor returned to all the habits of her old life – all the habits, with one extraordinary and incalculable addition which changed all these habits. The baby – so inconsiderable a little creature, not able to show a feeling, or express a thought, or make even a tremulous step from one pair of loving arms to another – an altogether helpless little bundle, but nevertheless one who had already altered the existence of the cottage and its inhabitants, and made life a totally different thing for them. Can I tell how this was done? No doubt for the wisest objects, to guard the sacred seed of the race as mere duty could never guard it, rendering it the one thing most precious in the world to those to whom it is confided – at least to most of them. When that love fails, then is the deepest abyss of misery reached. I do not say that Elinor was happy in this dreadful breaking up of her life, or that her heart did not go back, with those relentings which are the worst part of every disruption, to the man who had broken her heart and unsettled her nature. The remembrance of him in his better moments would flash upon her, and bear every resentment away. Dreadful thoughts of how she might herself have done otherwise, have rendered their mutual life better, would come over her; and next moment recollections still more terrible of what he had done and said, the scorn she had borne, the insults, the neglect, and worse of all the complicity he had forced upon her, by which he had made her guilty when she knew and feared nothing – when these thoughts overcame her, as they did twenty times in a day, for it is the worst of such troubles that they will not be settled by one struggle, but come back and back, beginning over again at the same point, after we have wrestled through them, and have thought that we had come to a close – when these thoughts, I say, overcame her, she would rush to the room in which the baby held his throne, and press him to the heart which was beating so hotly, till it grew calm. And in the midst of all to sit down by the fire with the little atom of humanity in her lap, and see it spread and stretch its rosy limbs, would suffice to bring again to her face that beatitude which had filled John Tatham with wonder unspeakable. She took the baby and laid him on her heart to take the pain away: and so after a minute or two there was no more question of pain, but of happiness, and delicious play, and the raptures of motherhood. How strange were these things! She could not understand it herself, and fortunately did not try, but accepted that solace provided by God. As for Mrs. Dennistoun, she made no longer any pretences to herself, but allowed herself, as John had advised, to take her blessedness frankly without hypocrisy. When Elinor's dear face was veiled by misery her mother was sympathetically miserable, but at all other moments her heart sang for joy. She had her child again, and she had her child's child, an endless occupation, amusement, and delight. All this might come to an end – who can tell when? – but for the moment her house was no more lonely, the requirements of her being were satisfied. She had her Elinor – what more was to be said? And yet there was more to be said, for in addition there was the boy.

This was very well so far as the interior of the house and of their living was concerned, but very soon other difficulties arose. It had been Mrs. Dennistoun's desire, when she returned home, to communicate some modified version of what had happened to the neighbours around. She had thought it would not only be wise, but easier for themselves, that their position should be understood in the little parish society which, if it did not know authoritatively, would certainly inquire and investigate and divine, with the result of perhaps believing more than the truth, perhaps setting up an entirely fictitious explanation which it would be impossible to set aside, and very hard to bear. It is the worst of knowing a number of people intimately, and being known by them from the time your children were in their cradles, that every domestic incident requires some sort of explanation to this close little circle of spectators. But Elinor, who had not the experience of her mother in such matters, nor the knowledge of life, made a strenuous opposition to this. She would not have anything said. It was better, she thought, to leave it to their imagination, if they chose to interfere with their neighbours' concerns and imagine anything. "But why should they occupy themselves about us? And they have no imaginations," she said, with a contempt of her neighbours which is natural to young people, though very unjustifiable. "But, my darling," Mrs. Dennistoun would say, "the position is so strange. There are not many young women who – And there must be some way of accounting for it. Let us just tell them – "

"For heaven's sake, mamma, tell them nothing! I have come to pay you a long visit after my neglect of you for these two years, which, of course, they know well enough. What more do they want to know? It is a very good reason: and while baby is so young of course it is far better for him to be in a settled home, where he can be properly attended to, than moving about. Isn't that enough?"

"Well, Elinor; at least you will let me say as much as that – "

"Oh, they can surely make it out for themselves. What is the use of always talking a matter over, to lead to a little more, and a little more, till the appetite for gossip is satisfied? Surely, in our circumstances, least said is soonest mended," Elinor said, with that air of superior understanding which almost always resides in persons of the younger generation. Mrs. Dennistoun said no more to her, but she did take advantage of the explanation thus suggested. She informed the anxious circle at the Rectory that Elinor had come to her on a long visit, "partly for me, and partly for the baby," she said, with one of those smiles which are either the height of duplicity or the most pathetic evidence of self-control, according as you choose to regard them. "She thinks she has neglected her mother, though I am sure I have never blamed her; and she thinks – of which there can be no doubt – that to carry an infant of that age moving about from place to place is the worst thing in the world; and that I am very thankful she should think so, I need not say."

"It is very nice for you, dear Mrs. Dennistoun," Mrs. Hudson said.

"And a good thing for Elinor," said Alice, "for she is looking very poorly. I have always heard that fashionable life took a great deal out of you if you are not quite brought up to it. I am sure I couldn't stand it," the young lady said with fervour, who had never had that painful delight in her power.

"That is all very well," said the Rector, rubbing his hands, "but what does Mr. Compton say to it? I don't want to say a word against your arrangements, my dear lady, but you know there must be some one on the husband's side. Now, I am on the husband's side, and I am sorry for the poor young man. I hope he is going to join his wife. I hope, excuse me for saying it, that Elinor – though we are all so delighted to see her – will not forsake him, for too long."

And then Mrs. Dennistoun felt herself compelled to embroider a little upon her theme.

"He has to be a great deal abroad during this year," she said; "he has a great many things to do. Elinor does not know when he will be – home. That is one reason – "

"To be sure, to be sure," the Rector said, rubbing his hands still more, and coming to her aid just as she was breaking down. "Something diplomatic, of course. Well, we must not inquire into the secrets of the State. But what an ease to his mind, my dear lady, to think that his wife and child will be safe with you while he's away!"

Mary Dale not being present could not of course say anything. She was a person who was always dreadfully well informed. It was a comfort unspeakable that at this moment she was away!

This explanation made the spring pass quietly enough, but not without many questions that brought the blood to Elinor's face. When she was asked by some one, for the first time, "When do you expect Mr. Compton, Elinor?" the sudden wild flush of colour which flooded her countenance startled the questioner as much as the question did herself. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" said the injudicious but perfectly innocent seeker for information. I fear that Elinor fell upon her mother after this, and demanded to know what she had said. But as Mrs. Dennistoun was innocent of anything but having said that Philip was abroad, there was no satisfaction to be got out of that. Some time after, one of the Miss Hills congratulated Elinor, having seen in the papers that Mr. Compton was returning to town for the season. "I suppose, dear Elinor, we shan't have you with us much longer," this lady said. And then it became known at the Cottage that Mary Dale was returning to the Rectory. This was the last aggravation, and Elinor, who had now recovered her strength and energy, and temper along with it, received the news with an outburst of impatience which frightened her mother. "You may as well go through the parish and ring the bell, and tell everybody everything," she said. "Mary Dale will have heard all, and a great deal more than all; she will come with her budget, and pour it out far and wide; she will report scenes that never took place: and quarrels, and all that – that woman insinuated to John – and she will be surrounded with people who will shake their heads, and sink their voices when we come in and say, 'Poor Elinor!' I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it," she cried.

"My darling! that was bound to come sooner or later. We must set our faces like a rock, and look as if we were unaware of anything – "

"I cannot look as if I were unaware. I cannot meet all their cruel eyes. I can see, now, the smile on Mary Dale's face, that will say, 'I told you so.' I shall hear her say it even when I am in my room, with the combe between. I know exactly how she will say it – 'If Elinor had listened to me – '"

"Elinor," said poor Mrs. Dennistoun, "I cannot contradict you, dear. It will be so – but none of them are cruel, not even Mary Dale. They will make their remarks – who could help it? we should ourselves if it were some one else's case: but they will not be cruel – don't think so – they will be full of sympathy – "

"Which is a great deal worse," Elinor said, in her unreason; "the one might be borne, but the other I will not endure. Sympathy, yes! They will all be sorry for me – they will say they knew how it would be. Oh, I know I have not profited as I ought by what has happened to me. I am unsubdued. I am as impatient and as proud as ever. It is quite true, but it cannot be mended. It is more than I can bear."

"My darling," said her mother, again. "We all say that in our trouble, and yet we know that we have got to bear it all the same. It is intolerable – one says that a thousand times – and yet it has to be put up with. All the time that we have been flattering ourselves that nobody took any notice it has been a delusion, Elinor. How could it be otherwise? We must set our faces – "

"Not I, mamma!" she said. "Not I! I must go away – "

"Go away? Elinor!"

"Among strangers; where nobody has heard of me before – where nobody can make any remark. To live like this, among a crowd of people who think they ought to know everything that one is doing – who are nothing to you, and yet whom you stand in awe of and must explain everything to! – it is this that is intolerable. I cannot, cannot bear it. Mother, I will take my baby, and I will go away – "

"Where?" said Mrs. Dennistoun, with all the colour fading out of her face. What panic had taken her I cannot tell. She grew pale to her lips, and the words were almost inaudible which she breathed forth. I think she thought for a moment that Elinor's heart had turned, that she was going back to her husband to find refuge with him from the strife of tongues which she could not encounter alone. All the blood went back upon the mother's heart – yet she set herself to suppress all emotion, and if this should be so, not to oppose it – for was it not the thing of all others to be desired – the thing which everybody would approve, the reuniting of those whom God had put together? Though it might be death to her, not a word of opposition would she say.

"Where? how can I tell where – anywhere, anywhere out of the world," cried Elinor, in the boiling tide of her impatience and wretchedness, "where nobody ever heard of us before, where there will be no one to ask, no one to require a reason, where we should be free to move when we please and do as we please. Let me go, mother. It seemed too dear, too peaceful to come home, but now home itself has become intolerable. I will take my baby and I will go – to the farthest point the railway can take me to – with no servant to betray me, not even an address. Mother, let me go away and be lost; let me be as if I had never been."

"And me – am I to remain to bear the brunt behind?"

"And you – mamma! Oh, I am the most unworthy creature. I don't deserve to have you, I that am always giving you pain. Why should I unroot you from your place where you have lived so long – from your flowers, and your landscape, and your pretty rooms that were always a comfort to think of in that horrible time when I was away? I always liked to think of you here, happy and quiet, in the place you had chosen."

"Flowers and landscapes are pretty things," said Mrs. Dennistoun, whose colour had begun to come again a little, "but they don't make up for one's children. We must not do anything rashly, Elinor; but if what you mean is really that you will go away to a strange place among strangers – "

"What else could I mean?" Elinor said, and then she in her turn grew pale. "If you thought I could mean that I would go – back – "

"Oh, my darling, my darling! God knows if we are right or wrong – I not to advise you so, or you not to take my advice. Elinor, it is my duty, and I will say it though it were to break my heart. There only could you avoid this strife of tongues. John spoke the truth. He said, as the boy grew up we should have – many troubles. I have known women endure everything that their children might grow up in a natural situation, in their proper sphere. Think of this – I am saying it against my own interest, against my own heart. But think of it, Elinor. Whatever you might have to bear, you would be in your natural place."

Elinor received this agitated address standing up, holding her head high, her nostrils expanded, her lips apart. "Have you quite done, mother?" she said.

Mrs. Dennistoun made an appealing movement with her hands, and sank, without any power to add a word, into a chair.

"I am glad you said it against your heart. Now you must feel that your conscience is clear. Mother, if I had to wander the world from place to place, without even a spot of ground on which to rest my foot, I would never, never do what you say. What! take my child to grow up in that tainted air; give him up to be taught such things as they teach! Never, never, never! His natural place, did you say? I would rather the slums of London were his natural place. He would have some chance there! If I could bear it for myself, yet I could not for him – for him most of all. I will take him up in my arms. Thank God, I am strong now and can carry him – and go away – among strangers, I don't care where – where there can be no questions and no remarks."

"But not without me, Elinor!"

"Oh, mother, mother! What a child I am to you, to rend your heart as I have done, and now to tear you out of your house and home!"

"My home is where my children are," Mrs. Dennistoun said: and then she made a little pause. "But we must think it over, Elinor. Such a step as this must not be taken rashly. We will ask John to come down and advise us. My dear – "

"No, mother, not John or any one. I will go first if you like and find a place, and you will join me after. That woman" (it was poor Mary Dale, who was indeed full of information, but meant no harm) "is coming directly. I will not wait here to see her, or their faces after she has told them all the lies she will have heard. I am not going to take advice from any one. Let me alone, mother. I must, I must go away."

"But not by yourself, Elinor," Mrs. Dennistoun said.

This was how it happened that John Tatham, who had meant to go down to the Cottage the very next Saturday to see how things were going, was driven into a kind of stupefaction one morning in May by a letter which reached him from the North, a letter conveying news so unexpected and sudden, so unlike anything that had seemed possible, that he laid it down, when it was half read, with a gasp of astonishment, unable to believe his eyes.

CHAPTER XXIX

It was Mrs. Dennistoun whose letter brought John Tatham such dismay. It was dated Lakeside, Waterdale, Penrith – an address with which he had no associations whatever, and which he gazed at blankly for a moment before he attempted to read the letter, not knowing how to connect it with the well-known writing which was as familiar as the common day.

"You will wonder to see this address," she wrote. "You will wonder still more, dear John, when I tell you we have come here for good. I have left the Cottage in an agent's hands with the hope of letting it. Windyhill is such a healthy place that I hope somebody will soon be found to take it. You know Elinor would not let me make any explanation. And the constant questions and allusions to his movements which people had seen in the papers, and so forth, had got on her nerves, poor child. You can understand how easily this might come about. At last she got that she could not bear it longer. Mary Dale, who always lives half the year with her sister at the Rectory, was coming back. You know it was she who brought the first tale about him, and she knows, I think, all the gossip that ever was got up about any one. Poor Elinor – though I don't believe Mary had any bad meaning; and it would, alas! have been for all our good had we listened to what she said – Elinor cannot bear her; and when she heard she was coming, she declared she would take her baby and go away. I tried to bring her to reason, but I could not. Naturally it was she who convinced me – you know the process, John. Indeed, in many things I can see it is the best thing we could do. I am not supremely attached to Windyhill. The Cottage had got to be very homelike after living in it so long, but home is where those are whom one loves. And to live among one set of people for so many years, if it has great advantages, has at the same time very great disadvantages too. You can't keep anything to yourself. You must explain every step you take, and everything that happens to you. This is a lovely country, a little cold as yet, and a little damp perhaps, being so near the lake – but the mountains are beautiful, and the air delicious. Elinor is out all the day long, and baby grows like a flower. You must come and see us as soon as ever you can. That is one dreadful drawback, that we shall not have you running up and down from Saturday to Monday: and I am afraid you will be vexed with us that we did not take your advice first – you, who have always been our adviser. But Elinor would not hear a word of any advice. I think she was afraid you would disapprove: and it would have been worse to fly in your face if you had disapproved than to come away without consulting you: and you know how impetuous she is. At all events the die is cast. Write kindly to her; don't say anything to vex her. You can let yourself out, if you are very angry, upon me.

"One thing more. She desires that if you write you should address her as Mrs. Compton only, no Honourable. That might attract attention, and what we desire is to escape notice altogether, which I am sure is a thing you will thoroughly understand, now that we have transplanted ourselves so completely. Dear John, form the most favourable idea you can of this sudden step, and come and see us as soon as it is possible.

    "Yours affectly.,
    "M. D."

To say that John was thunderstruck by this letter is to describe his sensations mildly, for he was for a time bitterly angry, wounded, disappointed, disturbed to the bottom of his soul; but perhaps if truth were told it could scarcely be said that he disapproved. He thought it over, which he naturally did all that day, to the great detriment of his work, first with a sort of rage against Elinor and her impetuosity, which presently shaded down into understanding of her feelings, and ended in a sense that he might have known it from the first, and that really no other conclusion was possible. He came gradually to acquiesce in the step the ladies had taken. To have to explain everything to the Hudsons, and Hills, and Mary Dales, to open up your most sacred heart in order that they might be able to form a theory sufficient for their outside purposes of your motives and methods, or, what was perhaps worse still – to know that they were on the watch, guessing what you did not tell them, putting things together, explaining this and that in their own way – would have been intolerable. "That is the good of having attached friends," John exclaimed to himself, very unjustly: for it is human nature that is to blame, if there is any blame attaching to an exercise of ingenuity so inevitable. As a matter of fact, when Miss Dale brought the true or something like the true account to Windyhill, the warmth of the sympathy for Elinor, the wrath of the whole community with her unworthy husband, was almost impassioned. Had she been there it would not have been possible for those good people altogether to conceal from her how sorry and how indignant they were; even perhaps there might have been some who could not have kept out of their eyes, who must have betrayed in some word or shake of the head the "I told you so" which is so dear to human nature. But how was it possible that they could remain uninterested, unaffected by the trouble in the midst of them, or even appear to be so? John, like Elinor, threw a fiery dart of impatience at the country neighbours, not allowing that everywhere in the greatest town, in the most cosmopolitan community, this would have been the same.

"The chattering gossips!" he said, as if a club would not have been a great deal worse, as if indeed his own club, vaguely conscious of a connection by marriage between him and the dis-Honourable Phil, had not discussed it all, behind his back, long ago.

But on the whole John was forced not to disapprove. To say that he went the length of approving would be too much, and to deny that he launched forth a tremendous letter upon Mrs. Dennistoun, who always bore the brunt, is more than my conscience would permit. He did do this, throwing out, as the French say, fire and flame, but a few days after followed it up by a much milder letter (need I say this was addressed to Elinor?), allowing that he understood their motives, and that perhaps, from their own point of view, they were not so very much to blame. "You will find it very damp, very cold, very different from Windyhill," he said, with a sort of savage satisfaction. But as it happened to be unusually good weather among the lakes when his letter came, this dart did not do much harm. And that John felt the revolution in his habits consequent upon this move very much, it would be futile to deny. To have nowhere to go to freely when he pleased from Saturday to Monday (he had at least a score of places, but none like the Cottage) made a wonderful difference in his life. But perhaps when he came to think of it soberly, as he did so often in the brilliant Saturday afternoons of early summer, when the sunshine on the trees made his heart a little sick with the idea that he had, as he said to himself, nowhere to go to, he was not sure that the difference was not on the whole to his advantage. A man perhaps should not have it in his power to enjoy, in the most fraternal intimacy, the society of another man's wife whenever he pleased, even if to her he was, as he knew, of as little importance (notwithstanding that she was, as she would have said, so fond of John) as the postman, say, or any other secondary (yet sufficiently interesting) figure in the country neighbourhood. John knew in his heart of hearts that this was not a good thing nor a wholesome thing for him. He was not a man, as has been said, who would ever have hurried events, or insisted upon appropriating a woman, even when he loved her, and securing her as his very own. He would always have been able to put that off, to subordinate it to the necessity of getting on in the world, and securing his position: and he was by no means sure when he questioned his own heart (which was a thing he did seldom, knowing, like a wise man, that that shifty subject often made queer revelations, and was not at all an easy object to cross-examine), that the intercourse which he had again dropped into with Elinor was not on the whole as much as he required. There was no doubt that it kept him alive from one period to another; kept his heart moderately light and his mind wonderfully contented – as nothing else had ever done. He looked forward to his fortnightly or monthly visit to the Cottage (sometimes one, and sometimes the other; he never indulged himself so far as to go every week), and it gave him happiness enough to tide over all the dull moments between: and if anything came in his way and detained him even from his usual to a later train, he was ridiculously, absurdly angry. What right had he to feel so in respect to another man's wife? What right had he to watch the child – the child whom he disliked so much to begin with – developing its baby faculties with an interest he was half ashamed of, but which went on increasing? Another man's wife and another man's child. He saw now that it was not a wholesome thing for him, and he could never have given it up had they remained. It had become too much a part of his living; should he not be glad therefore that they had taken it into their own hands, and gone away? When it suddenly occurred to John, however, that this perhaps had some share in the ladies' hasty decision, that Mrs. Dennistoun perhaps (all that was objectionable was attributed to this poor lady) had been so abominably clear-sighted, so odiously presuming as to have suspected this, his sudden blaze of anger was foudroyant. Perhaps she had settled upon it for his sake, to take temptation out of his way. John could scarcely contain himself when this view of the case flashed upon him, although he was quite aware for himself that though it was a bitter wrench, yet it was perhaps good for him that Elinor should go away.

It was probably this wave of fierce and, as we are aware, quite unreasonable anger rushing over him that produced the change which everybody saw in John's life about this time. It was about the beginning of the season when people's enjoyments begin to multiply, and for the first time in his life John plunged into society like a very novice. He went everywhere. By this time he had made a great start in life, had been brought into note in one or two important cases, and was, as everybody knew, a young man very well thought of, and likely to do great things at the bar; so that he was free of many houses, and had so many invitations for his Sundays that he could well afford to be indifferent to the loss of such a humble house as the Cottage at Windyhill. Perhaps he wanted to persuade himself that this was the case, and that there really was nothing to regret. And it is certain that he did visit a great deal during that season at one house where there were two or three agreeable daughters; the house, indeed, of Sir John Gaythorne, who was Solicitor-General at that time, and a man who had always looked upon John Tatham with a favourable eye. The Gaythornes had a house near Dorking, where they often went from Saturday to Monday with a few choice convives, and "picknicked," as they themselves said, but it was a picknicking of a highly comfortable sort. John went down with them the very Saturday after he received that letter – the Saturday on which he had intended to go to Windyhill. And the party was very gay. To compare it for a moment with the humdrum family at the Cottage would have been absurd. The Gaythornes prided themselves on always having pleasant people with them, and they had several remarkably pleasant people that day, among whom John himself was welcomed by most persons; and the family themselves were lively and agreeable to a high degree. A distinguished father, a very nice mother, and three charming girls, up to everything and who knew everybody; who had read or skimmed all the new books of any importance, and had seen all the new pictures; who could talk of serious things as well as they could talk nonsense, and who were good girls to boot, looking after the poor, and visiting at hospitals, in the intervals of their gaieties, as was then the highest fashion in town. I do not for a moment mean to imply that the Miss Gaythornes did their good work because it was the fashion: but the fact that it is the fashion has liberated many girls, and allowed them to carry out their natural wishes in that way, who otherwise would have been restrained and hampered by parents and friends, who would have upbraided them with making themselves remarkable, if in a former generation they had attempted to go to Whitechapel or St. Thomas's with any active intentions. And Elinor had never done anything of this kind, any more than she had pursued music almost as a profession, which was what Helena Gaythorne had done; or learned to draw, like Maud (who once had a little thing in the Royal Academy); or studied the Classics, like Gertrude. John thought of her little tunes as he listened to Miss Gaythorne's performance, and almost laughed out at the comparison. He was very fond of music, and Miss Gaythorne's playing was something which the most cultivated audience might have been glad to listen to. He was ashamed to confess to himself that he liked the "tunes" best. No, he would not confess it even to himself; but when he stood behind the performer listening, it occurred to him that he was capable of walking all the miles of hill and hollow which divided the one place from the other, only for the inane satisfaction of seeing that baby spread on Elinor's lap, or hearing her play to him one of her "tunes."

He went with the Gaythornes to their country-place twice in the month of June, and dined at the house several times, and was invited on other occasions, becoming, in short, one of the habitués when there was anything going on in the house – till people began to ask, which was it? It was thought generally that Helena was the attraction, for John was known to be a musical man, always to be found where specially good music was going. Some friends of the family had even gone so far as to say among themselves what a good thing it was that dear Helena's lot was likely to be cast with one who would appreciate her gift. "It generally happens in these cases that a girl marries somebody who does not know one note from another," they said to each other. When, all at once, John flagged in his visits; went no more to Dorking; and finally ceased to be more assiduous or more remarked than the other young men who were on terms of partial intimacy at the Gaythorne house. He had, indeed, tried very hard to make himself fall in love with one of Sir John's girls. It would have been an excellent connection, and the man might think himself fortunate who secured any one of the three for his wife. Proceeding from his certainty on these points, and also a general liking for their company, John had gone into it with a settled purpose, determined to fall in love if he could: but he found that the thing was not to be done. It was a pity; but it could not be helped. He was in a condition now when it would no longer be rash to marry, and he knew now that there was the makings of a domestic man in him. He never could have believed that he would take an interest in the sprawling of the baby upon its mother's knee, and he allowed to himself that it might be sweet to have that scene taking place in a house of his own. Ah! but the baby would have to be Elinor's. It must be Elinor who should sit on that low chair with the firelight on her face. And that was impossible. Helena Gaythorne was an exceedingly nice girl, and he wished her every success in life (which she attained some time after by marrying Lord Ballinasloe, the eldest son of the Earl of Athenree, a marriage which everybody approved), but he could not persuade himself to be in love with her, though with the best will in the world.