breath, and he turned and went away; this time
for good. But Ellinor recovered. She knew
she was recovering, when day after day she felt
involuntary strength and appetite return. Her
body seemed stronger than her will; for that
would have induced her to creep into her grave,
and shut her eyes for ever on this world, so full
of troubles.

She lay, for the most part, with her eyes closed,
very still and quiet; but she thought with the
intensity of one who seeks for lost peace, and
cannot find it. She began to see that if in the
mad impulses of that mad nightmare of horror,
they had all strengthened each other, and dared
to be frank and open, confessing a great fault, a
greater disaster, a greater woe — which in the
first instance was hardly a crime — their future
course, though sad and sorrowful, would have
been a simple and straightforward one to tread.
But it was not for her to undo what was done,
and to reveal the error and shame of a father.
Only she, turning anew to God, in the solemn
and quiet watches of the night, made a covenant,
that in her conduct, her own personal and individual
life, she would act loyally and truthfully.
And as for the future, and all the terrible chances
involved in it, she would leave it in His hands —
if, indeed (and here came in the Tempter), He
would watch over one whose life hereafter must
seem based upon a lie. Her only plea, offered
"standing afar off," was, "The lie is said and
done and over — it was not for my own sake. Can
filial piety be so overcome by the rights of justice
and truth, as to demand of me that I should reveal
my father's guilt?"

Her father's severe, sharp punishment began.
He knew why she suffered, what made her young
strength falter and tremble, what made her life
seem nigh about to be quenched in death. Yet
he could not take his sorrow and care in the
natural manner. He was obliged to think how
every word and deed would be construed. He
fancied that people were watching him with
suspicious eyes, when nothing was further from their
thoughts. Tor once let the "public" of any
place be possessed by an idea, it is more difficult
to dislodge it than any one imagines who has not
tried. If Mr. Wilkins had gone into Hamley
market-place, and proclaimed himself guilty of
the manslaughter of Mr. Dunster — nay, if he had
detailed all the circumstances the people would
have exclaimed, " Poor man, he is crazed by this
discovery of the unworthiness of the man he
trusted so; and no wonder — it was such a thing
to have done - to have defrauded his partner to
such an extent, and then have made off to
America!"

For many small circumstances, which I do not
stop to detail here, went far to prove this, as we
know, unfounded supposition; and Mr. Wilkins,
who was known, from his handsome boyhood,
through his comely manhood, up to the present
time, to all the people in Hamley, was an object
of sympathy and respect to every one who saw
him, as he passed by, old and lorn and haggard
before his time, all through the evil conduct of
one, London-bred, who was as a hard unlovely
stranger to the popular mind of this little country
town.

Mr. Wilkins's own servants liked him. The
workings of his temptations were such as they
could understand. If he had been hot-tempered,
he had also been generous, or I should rather say
careless and lavish with his money. And now
that he was cheated and impoverished by his
partner's delinquency, they thought it no wonder
that he drank long and deep in the solitary evenings
which he passed at home. It was not that
he was without invitations. Every one came
forward to testify their respect to him by asking
him to their houses. He had probably never
been so universally popular since his father's
death. But, as he said, he did not care to go into
society while his daughter was so ill — he had no
spirits for company.

But if any one had cared to observe his
conduct at home, and to draw conclusions from it,
they could have noticed that, anxious as he was
about Ellinor, he rather avoided than sought
her presence, now that her consciousness and
memory were restored. Nor did she ask for, or
wish for him. The presence of each was a burden
to the other. Oh, sad and woful night of May —
overshadowing the coming summer months with
gloom and bitter remorse!

CHAPTER VIII.

Still youth prevailed over all. Ellinor got
well, as I have said, even when she would fain
have died. And the afternoon came when she
left her room. Miss Monro would gladly have
made a festival of her recovery, and have had
her conveyed into the unused drawing-room.
But Ellinor begged that she might be taken into
the library — into the schoolroom — anywhere
(thought she) not looking on the side of the
house on the flower-garden, which she had felt in
all her illness as a ghastly pressure, lying within
sight of those very windows, through which the
morning sun streamed right upon her bed — like
the accusing angel, bringing all hidden things to
light.

And when Ellinor was better still, when the
Bath-chair had been sent up for her use, by some
kindly old maid, out of Hamley, she still
petitioned that it might be kept on the lawn or
town side of the house, away from the flower-
garden.

One day she almost screamed, when, as she was
going to the front door, she saw Dixon standing
ready to draw her, instead of Fletcher, the
servant who usually went. But she checked all
demonstration of feeling; although it was the
first time she had seen him since he and she and
one more had worked their hearts out in hard
bodily labour.

He looked so stern and ill! Cross, too, which
she had never seen him before.

As soon as they were out of immediate sight of