rhaps you will be so kind as to send and inquire at Mrs.
Jackson's."

Ellinor sickened at the words. She had been all her life a truthful
plain-spoken girl. She held herself high above deceit. Yet, here came
the necessity for deceit--a snare spread around her. She had not
revolted so much from the deed which brought unpremeditated death, as she
did from these words of her father's. The night before, in her mad fever
of affright, she had fancied that to conceal the body was all that would
be required; she had not looked forward to the long, weary course of
small lies, to be done and said, involved in that one mistaken action.
Yet, while her father's words made her soul revolt, his appearance melted
her heart, as she caught it, half turned away from her, neither looking
straight at Miss Monro, nor at anything materially visible. His hollow
sunken eye seemed to Ellinor to have a vision of the dead man before it.
His cheek was livid and worn, and its healthy colouring gained by years
of hearty out-door exercise, was all gone into the wanness of age. His
hair, even to Ellinor, seemed greyer for the past night of wretchedness.
He stooped, and looked dreamily earthward, where formerly he had stood
erect. It needed all the pity called forth by such observation to quench
Ellinor's passionate contempt for the course on which she and her father
were embarked, when she heard him repeat his words to the servant who
came with her broth.

"Fletcher! go to Mrs. Jackson's and inquire if Mr. Dunster is come home
yet. I want to speak to him."

"To him!" lying dead where he had been laid; killed by the man who now
asked for his presence. Ellinor shut her eyes, and lay back in despair.
She wished she might die, and be out of this horrible tangle of events.

Two minutes after, she was conscious of her father and Miss Monro
stealing softly out of the room. They thought that she slept.

She sprang off the sofa and knelt down.

"Oh, God," she prayed, "Thou knowest! Help me! There is none other help
but Thee!"

I suppose she fainted. For, an hour or more afterwards Miss Monro,
coming in, found her lying insensible by the side of the sofa.

She was carried to bed. She was not delirious, she was only in a stupor,
which they feared might end in delirium. To obviate this, her father
sent far and wide for skilful physicians, who tended her, almost at the
rate of a guinea the minute.

People said how hard it was upon Mr. Wilk