reached her. But she was too proud to take any notice. And perhaps these
dreary anticipations, on the whole, did her good, for her heart rose
against them, and any little possible doubts in her own mind were put
to sudden flight by the opposition and determination which flooded her
heart. This made her playing a little more unsteady than usual, and she
broke down several times in the middle of a "tune;" but nobody remarked
this: they were all fully occupied with their own thoughts.

All, at least, except John, who wandered uneasily about the room, now
studying the names of the books on the bookshelves--which he knew by
heart, now pulling the curtain aside to look out at the moonlight, now
pulling at the fronds of the great maidenhair in his distraction till
the table round was scattered with little broken leaves. He wanted to
keep out of that atmosphere of emotion which surrounded Elinor at the
piano. But it attracted him, all the same, as the light attracts a moth.
To get away from that, to make the severance which so soon must be a
perfect severance, was the only true policy he knew; for what was he to
her, and what could she be to him? He had already said everything which
a man in his position ought to say. He took out a book at last, and sat
down doggedly by the table to read, thus making another circle of
atmosphere, so to speak, another globe of isolated being in the little
room, while the two elder people talked low in the centre, conventionally
inaudible to the girl who was playing and the young man who was reading.
But John might as well have tried to solve some tremendous problem as to
read that book. He too heard every word the elders were saying. He heard
them with his own ears, and also he heard them through the ears of
Elinor, gauging the effect which every word would have upon her. At last
he could bear it no longer. He was driven to her side to bear a part of
her burden, even to prevent her from hearing, which would be something.
He resisted the impulse to throw down his book, and only placed it very
quietly on the table, and even in a deliberate way, that there might be
no appearance of feeling about him--and made his way by degrees, pausing
now and then to look at a picture, though he knew them all by heart.
Thus he arrived at last at the piano, in what he flattered himself was
an accidental way.

"Elinor, the stars are so bright over the combe, do come out. It is not
often they are so clear."

"No