at she did
not expect him to return to Ford Bank. Miss Monro's astonishment was
unbounded. She kept going over and over all the little circumstances she
had noticed during the last visit, only on yesterday, in fact, which she
could not reconcile with the notion that the two, apparently so much
attached to each other but a few hours before, were now to be for ever
separated and estranged. Ellinor sickened under the torture; which yet
seemed like torture in a dream, from which there must come an awakening
and a relief. She felt as if she could not hear any more; yet there was
more to hear. Her father, as it turned out, was very ill, and had been
so all night long; he had evidently had some kind of attack on the brain,
whether apoplectic or paralytic it was for the doctors to decide. In the
hurry and anxiety of this day of misery succeeding to misery, she almost
forgot to wonder whether Ralph were still at the Parsonage--still in
Hamley; it was not till the evening visit of the physician that she
learnt that he had been seen by Dr. Moore as he was taking his place in
the morning mail to London. Dr. Moore alluded to his name as to a
thought that would cheer and comfort the fragile girl during her night-
watch by her father's bedside. But Miss Monro stole out after the doctor
to warn him off the subject for the future, crying bitterly over the
forlorn position of her darling as she spoke--crying as Ellinor had never
yet been able to cry: though all the time, in the pride of her sex, she
was as endeavouring to persuade the doctor it was entirely Ellinor's
doing, and the wisest and best thing she could have done, as he was not
good enough for her, only a poor barrister struggling for a livelihood.
Like many other kind-hearted people, she fell into the blunder of
lowering the moral character of those whom it is their greatest wish to
exalt. But Dr. Moore knew Ellinor too well to believe the whole of what
Miss Monro said; she would never act from interested motives, and was all
the more likely to cling to a man because he was down and unsuccessful.
No! there had been a lovers' quarrel; and it could not have happened at a
sadder time.

Before the June roses were in full bloom, Mr. Wilkins was dead. He had
left his daughter to the guardianship of Mr. Ness by some will made years
ago; but Mr. Ness had caught a rheumatic fever with his Easter fishings,
and been unable to be moved home from the little Welsh inn where he had