he other tests through which he had gone. Never had he been
so entirely the companion of Elinor, never before had they spent so many
hours together without other society. At Windyhill, indeed, their
interviews had been quite unrestrained, but then Elinor had many friends
and interests in the parish and outside of it, visits to pay and duties
to perform. Now she had her child, which occupied her mornings and
evenings, but left her free for hours of rambling among the hills, for
long walks, from which she came back blooming with the fresh air and
breezes which had blown her about, ruffling her hair, and stirring up
her spirits and thoughts. Sometimes when there has been heavy and
premature suffering there occurs thus in the young another spring-time,
an almost childhood of natural, it may be said superficial pleasure--the
power of being amused, and of enjoying every simple satisfaction without
any _arriere pensee_ like a child. She had recovered her strength and
vigour in the mountain air--and in that freedom of being unknown, with
no look ever directed to her which reminded her of the past, no question
which brought back her troubles, had blossomed out into that fine
youthful maturity of twenty-six, which has already an advantage over the
earlier girlhood, the perfection of the woman grown. Elinor had thought
of many things and understood many things, which she had still regarded
with the high assumptions of ignorance three or four years ago. And poor
John, who had tried so hard to find himself a mate that suited him, who
had studied so many girls more beautiful, more accomplished than Elinor,
in the hope of goading himself, so to speak, into love, and had not
succeeded--and who had felt so strongly that another man's wife must not
occupy so much of his thoughts, nor another man's child give him an
unwilling pleasure which was almost fatherly--poor John felt himself
placed in a position more trying than any he had known before, more
difficult to steer his way through. He had never had so much of her
company, and she did not conceal the pleasure it was to her to have some
one to walk with, to talk with, who understood what she said and what
she did not say, and was in that unpurchasable sympathy with herself
which is not to be got by beauty, or by will, or even by love itself,
but comes by nature. Elinor felt this with simple pleasure. Without any
complicating suspicion, she said, "What a brother John is! I always felt
him