ou must be
aware of our mutual attachment."

"Well," said Mr. Wilkins--he had resumed his cigar, partly to conceal his
agitation at what he knew was coming--"I believe I have had my
suspicions. It is not very long since I was young myself." And he
sighed over the recollection of Lettice, and his fresh, hopeful youth.

"And I hope, sir, as you have been aware of it, and have never manifested
any disapprobation of it, that you will not refuse your consent--a
consent I now ask you for--to our marriage."

Mr. Wilkins did not speak for a little while--a touch, a thought, a word
more would have brought him to tears; for at the last he found it hard to
give the consent which would part him from his only child. Suddenly he
got up, and putting his hand into that of the anxious lover (for his
silence had rendered Mr. Corbet anxious up to a certain point of
perplexity--he could not understand the implied he would and he would
not), Mr. Wilkins said,

"Yes! God bless you both! I will give her to you, some day--only it
must be a long time first. And now go away--go back to her--for I can't
stand this much longer."

Mr. Corbet returned to Ellinor. Mr. Wilkins sat down and buried his head
in his hands, then went to his stable, and had Wildfire saddled for a
good gallop over the country. Mr. Dunster waited for him in vain at the
office, where an obstinate old country gentleman from a distant part of
the shire would ignore Dunster's existence as a partner, and
pertinaciously demanded to see Mr. Wilkins on important business.

CHAPTER V.

A few days afterwards, Ellinor's father bethought himself that same
further communication ought to take place between him and his daughter's
lover regarding the approval of the family of the latter to the young
man's engagement, and he accordingly wrote a very gentlemanly letter,
saying that of course he trusted that Ralph had informed his father of
his engagement; that Mr. Corbet was well known to Mr. Wilkins by
reputation, holding the position which he did in Shropshire, but that as
Mr. Wilkins did not pretend to be in the same station of life, Mr. Corbet
might possibly never even have heard of his name, although in his own
county it was well known as having been for generations that of the
principal conveyancer and land-agent of ---shire; that his wife had been
a member of the old knightly family of Holsters, and that he himself was
descended from a younger branch of the South