ettier when she's in a
passion. I'm not in a hurry, you see, Carley; I can bide my time; but I
shall never take a mistress to Wyncomb unless I can take the one I like."

After this particular evening, Mr. Whitelaw's presence seemed more than
ever disagreeable to poor Ellen. He had the air of her fate somehow,
sitting rooted to the hearth night after night, and she grew to regard
him with a half superstitious horror, as if he possessed some occult
power over her, and could bend her to his wishes in spite of herself. The
very quietude of the man became appalling to her. Such a man seemed
capable of accomplishing anything by the mere force of persistence, by
the negative power that lay in his silent nature.

"I suppose he means to sit in that room night after night, smoking his
pipe and staring with those pale stupid eyes of his, till I change my
mind and promise to marry him," Ellen said to herself, as she meditated
angrily on the annoyance of Mr. Whitelaw's courtship. "He may sit there
till his hair turns gray--if ever such red hair does turn to anything
better than itself--and he'll find no change in me. I wish Frank were
here to keep up my courage. I think if he were to ask me to run away with
him, I should be tempted to say yes, at the risk of bringing ruin upon
both of us; anything to escape out of the power of that man. But come
what may, I won't endure it much longer. I'll run away to service soon
after Christmas, and father will only have himself to thank for the loss
of me."

It was Mr. Whitelaw who appeared as principal guest at the Grange on
Christmas-day; Mr. Whitelaw, supported on this occasion by a widowed
cousin of his who had kept house for him for some years, and who bore a
strong family likeness to him both in person and manner, and Ellen Carley
thought that it was impossible for the world to contain a more
disagreeable pair. These were the guests who consumed great quantities of
Ellen's pies and puddings, and who sat under her festal garlands of holly
and laurel. She had been especially careful to hang no scrap of
mistletoe, which might have afforded Mr. Whitelaw an excuse for a
practical display of his gallantry; a fact which did not escape the
playful observation of his cousin, Mrs. Tadman.

"Young ladies don't often forget to put up a bit of mistletoe," said this
matron, "when there's a chance of them they like being by;" and she
glanced in a meaning way from Ellen to the master of Wyncomb Farm.