o do, and went late to avoid the bustle of the tea-table, and
the usual rabble of that no longer intimate but wildly gregarious house.
And he was not without his reward. Perhaps a habit he had lately formed
of passing by Curzon Street in the late afternoon, when he was on his
way to his club, after work was over, had something to do with his
choice of this hour. He found Elinor, as he had hoped, alone. She was
sitting so close to the window that her white dress mingled with the
white curtains, so that he did not at first perceive her, and so much
abstracted in her own thoughts that she did not pay any attention to the
servant's hurried murmur of his name at the door. When she felt rather
than saw that there was some one in the room, Elinor jumped up with a
shock of alarm that seemed unnecessary in her own drawing-room; then
seeing who it was, was so much and so suddenly moved that she shed a few
tears in some sudden revulsion of feeling as she said, "Oh, it is you,
John!"

"Yes," he said, "but I am very sorry to see you so nervous."

"Oh, it's nothing. I was always nervous"--which indeed was the purest
invention, for Elinor Dennistoun had not known what nerves meant. "I
mean I was always startled by any sudden entrance--in this way," she
cried, and very gravely asked him to be seated, with a curious
assumption of dignity. Her demeanour altogether was incomprehensible to
John.

"I hope," he said, "you were not displeased with me, Elinor, for going
off the other night. I should have been too happy, you know, to go with
you anywhere; but Lady Mariamne is more than I can stand."

"I was very glad you did not come," she said with a sigh; then smiling
faintly, "But you were ungrateful, for Mariamne formed a most favourable
opinion of you. She said, 'Why didn't you tell me, Nell, you had a
cousin so presentable as that?'"

"I am deeply obliged, Elinor; but it seems that what was a compliment to
me personally involved something the reverse for your other relations."

"It is one of their jokes," said Elinor, with a voice that faltered a
little, "to represent my relations as--not in a complimentary way. I am
supposed not to mind, and it's all a joke, or so they tell me; but it is
not a joke I like," she said, with a flash from her eyes.

"All families have jokes of that description," said John; "but tell me,
Nelly, are you really going down to the cottage, to your mother?"

Her eyes thanked him with a gleam of pleasure fo