necessary business for him to transact, the
urgency of which was the motive for Mr. Dunster's
visits. Mr. Wilkins always seemed to be
annoyed by his coming at so late an hour, and
spoke of it, resenting the intrusion upon his
leisure; and Ellinor, without consideration,
adopted her father's mode of speaking and
thinking on the subject, and was rather more
angry than he was whenever the obnoxious
partner came on business in the evening. This
night was of all nights the most ill-purposed
time (so Ellinor thought) for a tête-à-tête with
her father! However, there was no doubt in her
mind as to what she had to do. So late as it
was, the unwelcome visitor could not stop long;
and then she would go down and have her little
confidence with her father, and beg him to see
Mr. Livingstone when he came the next morning,
and dismiss him as gently as might be.

She sat on in the window-seat; dreaming
waking dreams of future happiness. She kept
losing herself in such thoughts, and became
almost afraid of forgetting why she sat there.
Presently she felt cold, and got up to fetch a
shawl, in which she muffled herself and resumed
her place. It seemed to her growing very late;
the moonlight was coming fuller and fuller into
the garden, and the blackness of the shadow was
more concentrated and stronger. Surely Mr. Dunster
could not have gone away along the dark
shrubbery-path, so noiselessly but what she
must have heard him? No! there was the
swell of voices coming up through the window
from her father's study: angry voices they
were; and her anger rose sympathetically, as she
knew that her father was being irritated. There
was a sudden movement, as of chairs pushed
hastily aside, and then a mysterious unaccountable
noise —  heavy, sudden; and then a slight
movement as of chairs again; and then a profound
stillness.  Ellinor leaned her head against
the side of the window to listen more intently,
for some mysterious instinct made her sick and
faint. No sound —  no noise. Only by-and-by she
heard, what we have all heard at such times of
intent listening, the beating of the pulses of her
heart, and then the whirling rush of blood through
her head. How long did this last? She never
knew. By-and-by she heard her father's hurried
footstep in his bedroom, next to hers; but when
she ran thither to speak to him, and ask him
what was amiss— if anything had been —  if she
might come to him now about Mr. Livingstone's
letter, she found that he had gone down again to
his study, and almost at the same moment she
heard the little private outer door of that room
open; some one went out, and then there were
hurried footsteps along the shrubbery-path. She
thought of course that it was Mr. Dunster leaving
the house; and went back for Mr. Livingstone's
letter. Having found it, she passed
through her father's room to the private staircase,
thinking that if she went by the more
regular way, she would have run the risk of
disturbing Miss Monro, and perhaps of being
questioned in the morning. Even in passing
down this remote staircase, she trod softly for
fear of being overheard. When she entered the
room, the full light of the candles dazzled her
for an instant, coming out of the darkness. They
were flaring wildly in the draught that came in
through the open door, by which the outer air
was admitted; for a moment there seemed to be
no one in the room; and then she saw, with
strange sick horror, the legs of some one lying on
the carpet behind the table. As if compelled,
even while she shrank from doing it, she went
round to see who it was that lay there, so still
and motionless as never to stir at her sudden
coming. It was Mr. Dunster; his head propped
on chair-cushions, his eyes open, staring,
distended. There was a strong smell of brandy and
hartshorn in the room; a smell so powerful as
not to be neutralised by the free current of
night air that blew through the two open doors.
Ellinor could not have told if it was reason or
instinct that made her act as she did during this
awful night. In thinking of it afterwards, with
shuddering avoidance of the haunting memory
that would come and overshadow her during
many, many years of her life, she grew to believe
that the powerful smell of the spilt brandy
absolutely intoxicated her an —  unconscious Rechabite
in practice. But something gave her a
presence of mind and a courage not her own.
And though she learnt to think afterwards that
she had acted unwisely, if not wrongly and
wickedly, yet she marvelled, in recalling that
time, how she could have then behaved as she did.
First of all she lifted herself up from her
fascinated gaze at the dead man, and went to the
staircase door, by which she had entered the study,
and shut it softly. Then she went back —  looked
again; took the brandy-bottle, and knelt down,
and tried to pour some into the mouth; but this
she found she could not do. Then she wetted
her handkerchief with the spirit, and moistened
the lips; all to no purpose; for as I have said
before the man was dead— killed by a rupture of
a vessel of the brain; how occasioned, I must tell
by-and-by. Of course, all Ellinor's little cares and
efforts produced no effect; her father had tried
them before —  vain endeavours all, to bring back
the precious breath of life! The poor girl could
not bear the look of those open eyes, and softly,
tenderly, tried to close them, although unconscious
that in so doing she was rendering the
pious offices of some beloved hand to a dead man.
She was sitting by the body on the floor when she
heard steps coming, with rushing and yet
cautious tread, through the shrubbery; she had
no fear, although it might be the tread of robbers
and murderers. The awfulness of the hour
raised her above common fears; though she did
not go through the usual process of reasoning,
and by it feel assured that the feet which were
coming so softly and swiftly along were the same
which she had heard leaving the room in like
manner only a quarter of an hour before.

Her father entered, and started back, almost