the first great shock of Mr. Corbet's marriage was over, she seemed to
pass into a greater peace than she had known for years; the last faint
hope of happiness was gone; it would, perhaps, be more accurate to say,
of the bright happiness she had planned for herself in her early youth.
Unconsciously, she was being weaned from self-seeking in any shape, and
her daily life became, if possible, more innocent and pure and holy. One
of the canons used to laugh at her for her constant attendance at all the
services, and for her devotion to good works, and call her always the
reverend sister. Miss Monro was a little annoyed at this faint clerical
joke; Ellinor smiled quietly. Miss Monro disapproved of Ellinor's grave
ways and sober severe style of dress.

"You may be as good as you like, my dear, and yet go dressed in some
pretty colour, instead of those perpetual blacks and greys, and then
there would be no need for me to be perpetually telling people you are
only four-and-thirty (and they don't believe me, though I tell them so
till I am black in the face). Or, if you would but wear a decent-shaped
bonnet, instead of always wearing those of the poky shape in fashion when
you were seventeen."

The old canon died, and some one was to be appointed in his stead. These
clerical preferments and appointments were the all-important interests to
the inhabitants of the Close, and the discussion of probabilities came up
invariably if any two met together, in street or house, or even in the
very cathedral itself. At length it was settled, and announced by the
higher powers. An energetic, hard-working clergyman from a distant part
of the diocese, Livingstone by name, was to have the vacant canonry.

Miss Monro said that the name was somehow familiar to her, and by degrees
she recollected the young curate who had come to inquire after Ellinor in
that dreadful illness she had had at Hamley in the year 1829. Ellinor
knew nothing of that visit; no more than Miss Monro did of what had
passed between the two before that anxious night. Ellinor just thought
it possible it might be the same Mr. Livingstone, and would rather it
were not, because she did not feel as if she could bear the frequent
though not intimate intercourse she must needs have, if such were the
case, with one so closely associated with that great time of terror which
she was striving to bury out of sight by every effort in her power. Miss
Monro, on the contrary, was