if--she means to take no steps on her side."

"What steps?" said Mrs. Dennistoun. Elinor turned her head to look at
him anxiously over the back of her chair.

"I have had a visit this afternoon," he said.

"From--" Elinor drew a long hurried breath. She said no name, but it was
evident that one was on her lips--a name she never meant to pronounce
more, but to which her whole being thrilled still even when it was
unspoken. She looked at him full of eagerness to hear yet with a hand
uplifted, as if to forbid any utterance.

"From Lady Mariamne."

How her countenance fell! She turned round again, and bent over her
baby. It was a pang of acute disappointment, he could not but see, that
went through her, though she would not have allowed him to say that
name. Strange inconsistency! it ran over John too with a sense of keen
indignation, as if he had taken from her an electric touch.

"----Whose object in coming to me was to ascertain whether you intended
to bring a suit for--divorce."

A cry rang through the room. Elinor turned upon him for a moment a face
blazing with hot and painful colour. The lamp had been brought in, and
he saw the fierce blush and look of horror. Then she turned round and
buried it in her hands.

"Divorce!" said Mrs. Dennistoun. "Elinor----! To drag her private
affairs before the world. Oh, John, John, that could not be. You would
not wish that to be."

"I!" he cried with a laugh of tuneless mirth. "Is it likely that I would
wish to drag Elinor before the world?"

Elinor did not say anything, but withdrew one hand from her burning
cheek and put it into his. These women treated John as if he were a man
of wood. What he might be feeling, or if he were feeling anything, did
not enter their minds.

"It was like her," said Elinor after a time in a low hurried voice, "to
think of that. She is the only one who would think of it. As if I had
ever thought or dreamed----"

"It is possible, however," he said, "that it might be reasonable enough.
I don't speak to Elinor," who had let go his hand hastily, "but to you,
aunt. If it is altogether final, as she says, to be released would
perhaps be better, from a bond that was no bond."

"John, John, would you have her add shame to pain?"

"The shame would not be to her, aunt."

"The shame is to every one concerned--to every one! My Elinor's name,
her dear name, dragged through all that mud! She a party, perhaps, to
revelations--Oh, never, never! We