ry of the unworthiness of the man he trusted so; and no
wonder--it was such a thing to have done--to have defrauded his partner
to such an extent, and then have made off to America!"

For many small circumstances, which I do not stop to detail here, went
far to prove this, as we know, unfounded supposition; and Mr. Wilkins,
who was known, from his handsome boyhood, through his comely manhood, up
to the present time, by all the people in Hamley, was an object of
sympathy and respect to every one who saw him, as he passed by, old, and
lorn, and haggard before his time, all through the evil conduct of one,
London-bred, who was as a hard, unlovely stranger to the popular mind of
this little country town.

Mr. Wilkins's own servants liked him. The workings of his temptations
were such as they could understand. If he had been hot-tempered he had
also been generous, or I should rather say careless and lavish with his
money. And now that he was cheated and impoverished by his partner's
delinquency, they thought it no wonder that he drank long and deep in the
solitary evenings which he passed at home. It was not that he was
without invitations. Every one came forward to testify their respect for
him by asking him to their houses. He had probably never been so
universally popular since his father's death. But, as he said, he did
not care to go into society while his daughter was so ill--he had no
spirits for company.

But if any one had cared to observe his conduct at home, and to draw
conclusions from it, they could have noticed that, anxious as he was
about Ellinor, he rather avoided than sought her presence, now that her
consciousness and memory were restored. Nor did she ask for, or wish for
him. The presence of each was a burden to the other. Oh, sad and woeful
night of May--overshadowing the coming summer months with gloom and
bitter remorse!

CHAPTER VIII.

Still youth prevailed over all. Ellinor got well, as I have said, even
when she would fain have died. And the afternoon came when she left her
room. Miss Monro would gladly have made a festival of her recovery, and
have had her conveyed into the unused drawing-room. But Ellinor begged
that she might be taken into the library--into the schoolroom--anywhere
(thought she) not looking on the side of the house on the flower-garden,
which she had felt in all her illness as a ghastly pressure lying within
sight of those very windows, through which th