very sentence to take breath.

Ellen Carley sat on that side of the comfortable round table most remote
from Mr. Whitelaw, deadly pale, with her hands clasped before her. Once
she lifted her eyes with a piteous look to her father's face; but he was
smoking his pipe solemnly, with his gaze fixed upon the blazing logs in
the grate, and contrived not to see that mute despairing appeal. He had
not looked at his daughter once since Stephen Whitelaw's arrival, nor had
he made any attempt to prepare her for this visit, this rapid
consummation of the sacrifice.

"Come, Miss Carley," said the former rather impatiently, after there had
been a dead silence of some minutes, "I want to get an answer direct from
your own lips. Your father hasn't been deceiving me, has he?"

"No," Ellen said in a low voice, almost as if the reply were dragged from
her by some physical torture. "If my father has given you a promise for
me, I will keep it. But I don't want to deceive you, on my part, Mr.
Whitelaw," she went on in a somewhat firmer tone. "I will be your wife,
since you and my father have settled that it must be so; but I can
promise no more than that. I will be dutiful and submissive to you as a
wife, you may be sure--only----"

Mr. Whitelaw smiled a very significant smile, which implied that it would
be his care to insure his wife's obedience, and that he was troubled by
no doubts upon that head.

The bailiff broke-in abruptly at this juncture.

"Lord bless the girl, what need is there of all this talk about what she
will be and what she won't be? She'll be as good a wife as any woman in
England, I'll stake my life upon that. She's been a good daughter, as all
the world knows, and a good daughter is bound to make a good wife. Say no
more about it, Nell. Stephen Whitelaw knows he'll make no bad bargain in
marrying you."

The farmer received this remark with a loud sniff, expressive of offended
dignity.

"Very likely not, William Carley," he said; "but it isn't every man that
can make your daughter mistress of such a place as Wyncomb; and such men
as could do it would look for money with a wife, however young and pretty
she might be. There's two sides to a bargain, you see, William, and I
should like things to be looked at in that light between you and me."

"You've no call to take offence, Steph," answered the bailiff with a
conciliating grin. "I never said you wasn't a good match for my girl; but
a pretty girl and a prudent cl