this great gloomy house? If you stay, I shall stay." Now this meant
a great deal more than it had meant in former years. Since Lopez
had died Mr. Wharton had not once dined at the Eldon. He came home
regularly at six o'clock, sat with his daughter an hour before
dinner, and then remained with her all the evening. It seemed as
though he were determined to force her out of her solitude by her
natural consideration for him. She would implore him to go to his
club and have his rubber, but he would never give way. No;--he didn't
care for the Eldon, and disliked whist. So he said. Till at last he
spoke more plainly. "You are dull enough here all day, and I will not
leave you in the evenings." There was a pertinacious tenderness in
this which she had not expected from the antecedents of his life.
When, therefore, he told her that he would not go into the country
without her, she felt herself almost constrained to yield.

And she would have yielded at once but for one fear. How could she
insure to herself that Arthur Fletcher should not be there? Of course
he would be at Longbarns, and how could she prevent his coming over
from Longbarns to Wharton? She could hardly bring herself to ask the
question of her father. But she felt an insuperable objection to
finding herself in Arthur's presence. Of course she loved him. Of
course in all the world he was of all the dearest to her. Of course
if she could wipe out the past as with a wet towel, if she could put
the crape off her mind as well as from her limbs, she would become
his wife with the greatest joy. But the very feeling that she loved
him was disgraceful to her in her own thoughts. She had allowed
his caress while Lopez was still her husband,--the husband who had
ill-used her and betrayed her, who had sought to drag her down to his
own depth of baseness. But now she could not endure to think that
that other man should even touch her. It was forbidden to her, she
believed, by all the canons of womanhood even to think of love again.
There ought to be nothing left for her but crape and weepers. She had
done it all by her own obstinacy, and she could make no compensation
either to her family, or to the world, or to her own feelings, but by
drinking the cup of her misery down to the very dregs. Even to think
of joy would in her be a treason. On that occasion she did not yield
to her father, conquering him as she had conquered him before by the
pleading of her looks rather than of