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Lester himself, a man who, in his long retirement, had not forgotten the attractions of intellectual society, nor even neglected a certain cultivation of intellectual pursuits, enjoyed a pleasure that he had not experienced for years. The gay Ellinor was fascinated into admiration; and Madeline, the most silent of the groupe, drank in every word, unsconcious of the sweet poison she imbibed.
But he believed that Lady Fawn had insisted on Lucy's departure; and of course, in such a case, Lucy must depart. He showed the letter to his sister, and asked for advice. "How very unfortunate!" said Ellinor. "Yes; is it not?" "I wonder what she said to Lord Fawn?" "She would speak out very plainly." "I suppose she has spoken out plainly, or otherwise they would never have told her to go away.
Confide in me, or it is my duty to write to him." Even Vivian's powers of dissimulation abandoned him, thus taken by surprise. He saw no alternative but to trust Lady Ellinor with his secret, and implore her to respect it. And then he spoke bitterly of his father's dislike to him, and his own resolution to prove the injustice of that dislike by the position he would himself establish in the world.
I had enough to do in sundry small orders for my voyage, and commissions for Bolding, to occupy me some hours. And, this business done, I found myself moving westward; mechanically, as it were, I had come to a kind of half-and-half resolution to call upon Lady Ellinor and question her, carelessly and incidentally, both about Gower and the new servant admitted to the household.
Ellinor, her junior by two years, was of a character equally gentle, but less elevated, and a beauty akin to her sister's. When Eugene Aram arrived at the manor house in keeping with his promise, something appeared to rest upon his mind, from which, however, by the excitement lent by wine and occasional bursts of eloquence, he seemed striving to escape, and at length he apparently succeeded.
"Come, dearest Madeline," Ellinor would say, "Come, you have thought enough; my poor father asks to see you." "Hush!" Madeline answered. "Hush, I have been walking with Eugene in heaven; and oh! there are green woods, and lulling waters above, as there are on earth, and we see the stars quite near, and I cannot tell you how happy their smile makes those who look upon them.
She was thinking of going to the prison in the county town, to see the old man herself, but Ellinor could perceive that all these endeavours and purposes of Miss Monro's were based on love for her own pupil, and a desire to set her mind at ease as far as she could, rather than from any idea that Dixon himself could be innocent.
Just in the shadow, the raven locks of Ellinor were bowed over her clasped hands, nothing of her face visible; the graceful neck and heaving breast alone distinguished from the shadow; and, hushed in a death-like and solemn repose, the parted lips moving inaudibly; the eye fixed on vacancy; the wan transparent hands, crossed upon her bosom; the light shone with a more softened and tender ray upon the faded but all-angelic form and countenance of her, for whom Heaven was already preparing its eternal recompense for the ills of Earth!
And then Ellinor had to tell her the outline of the facts so soon likely to be made public; that Mr. Corbet and she had determined to break off their engagement; and that Mr. Corbet had accordingly betaken himself to the Parsonage; and that she did not expect him to return to Ford Bank. Miss Monro's astonishment was unbounded.
The waiter returned with the answer while she yet was pacing up and down the room restlessly, nerving herself for the interview. "The messenger has been to Hyde Park Gardens, ma'am. The Judge and Lady Corbet are gone out to dinner." Lady Corbet! Of course Ellinor knew that he was married. Had she not been present at the wedding in East Chester Cathedral?
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