but allowed herself, as John had advised, to take her
blessedness frankly without hypocrisy. When Elinor's dear face was
veiled by misery her mother was sympathetically miserable, but at all
other moments her heart sang for joy. She had her child again, and she
had her child's child, an endless occupation, amusement, and delight.
All this might come to an end--who can tell when?--but for the moment
her house was no more lonely, the requirements of her being were
satisfied. She had her Elinor--what more was to be said? And yet there
was more to be said, for in addition there was the boy.

This was very well so far as the interior of the house and of their
living was concerned, but very soon other difficulties arose. It had
been Mrs. Dennistoun's desire, when she returned home, to communicate
some modified version of what had happened to the neighbours around. She
had thought it would not only be wise, but easier for themselves, that
their position should be understood in the little parish society which,
if it did not know authoritatively, would certainly inquire and
investigate and divine, with the result of perhaps believing more than
the truth, perhaps setting up an entirely fictitious explanation which
it would be impossible to set aside, and very hard to bear. It is the
worst of knowing a number of people intimately, and being known by them
from the time your children were in their cradles, that every domestic
incident requires some sort of explanation to this close little circle
of spectators. But Elinor, who had not the experience of her mother in
such matters, nor the knowledge of life, made a strenuous opposition to
this. She would not have anything said. It was better, she thought, to
leave it to their imagination, if they chose to interfere with their
neighbours' concerns and imagine anything. "But why should they occupy
themselves about us? And they have no imaginations," she said, with a
contempt of her neighbours which is natural to young people, though very
unjustifiable. "But, my darling," Mrs. Dennistoun would say, "the
position is so strange. There are not many young women who--And there
must be some way of accounting for it. Let us just tell them----"

"For heaven's sake, mamma, tell them nothing! I have come to pay you
a long visit after my neglect of you for these two years, which, of
course, they know well enough. What more do they want to know? It is a
very good reason: and while baby is so young of