ugh operant in Elfride, was decidedly purposeless. She had
wanted her friend Knight's good opinion from the first: how much more
than that elementary ingredient of friendship she now desired, her fears
would hardly allow her to think. In originally wishing to please
the highest class of man she had ever intimately known, there was no
disloyalty to Stephen Smith. She could not--and few women can--realize
the possible vastness of an issue which has only an insignificant
begetting.

Her letters from Stephen were necessarily few, and her sense of fidelity
clung to the last she had received as a wrecked mariner clings to
flotsam. The young girl persuaded herself that she was glad Stephen
had such a right to her hand as he had acquired (in her eyes) by the
elopement. She beguiled herself by saying, 'Perhaps if I had not so
committed myself I might fall in love with Mr. Knight.'

All this made the week of Knight's absence very gloomy and distasteful
to her. She retained Stephen in her prayers, and his old letters were
re-read--as a medicine in reality, though she deceived herself into the
belief that it was as a pleasure.

These letters had grown more and more hopeful. He told her that he
finished his work every day with a pleasant consciousness of having
removed one more stone from the barrier which divided them. Then he drew
images of what a fine figure they two would cut some day. People would
turn their heads and say, 'What a prize he has won!' She was not to be
sad about that wild runaway attempt of theirs (Elfride had repeatedly
said that it grieved her). Whatever any other person who knew of it
might think, he knew well enough the modesty of her nature. The only
reproach was a gentle one for not having written quite so devotedly
during her visit to London. Her letter had seemed to have a liveliness
derived from other thoughts than thoughts of him.

Knight's intention of an early return to Endelstow having originally
been faint, his promise to do so had been fainter. He was a man who kept
his words well to the rear of his possible actions. The vicar was rather
surprised to see him again so soon: Mrs. Swancourt was not. Knight
found, on meeting them all, after his arrival had been announced, that
they had formed an intention to go to St. Leonards for a few days at the
end of the month.

No satisfactory conjuncture offered itself on this first evening of his
return for presenting Elfride with what he had been at suc