d swallowed up
in another nursery, is the most unprofitable of benefactions. This is
what Mary Tatham's eldest girl had just done, almost before her bills at
Newnham had been paid. A wedding present had, so to speak, been demanded
from Uncle John at the end of the bayonet to show his satisfaction in
the event which had taken all meaning out of his exertions for little
Mary. He had given it indeed--in the shape not of a biscuit-box, which
is what she would have deserved, but of a cheque--but he was not
pleased. Neither was he pleased, as has been seen, by the proceedings of
Elinor, who had slighted all his advice yet clung to himself in a way
some women have. I do not know whether men expect you to be quite as
much their friend as ever after they have rejected your counsel and
taken their own (exactly opposite) way: but women do, and indeed I think
expect you to be rather grateful that they have not taken amiss the
advice which they have rejected and despised. This was Elinor's case.
She hoped that John was ashamed of advising her to make her boy
acquainted with his family and the fact of his father's existence, and
that he duly appreciated the fact that she did not resent that advice;
and then she expected from him the same attention to herself and her son
as if the boy had been guided in his and not in her way. Thus it will be
seen his friends and relations expected a very great deal from John.

He had gone to his chambers one afternoon after he left the law courts,
and was there very busily engaged in getting up his notes for to-morrow's
work, when he received a visit which awakened at once echoes of the past
and alarms for the future in John's mind. It was very early in the year,
the end of January, and the House was not sitting, so that his public
duties were less overwhelming than usual. His room was the same in which
we have already seen on various occasions, and which Elinor in her
youth, before anything had happened to make life serious for her, had
been in the habit of calling the Star Chamber, for no reason in the
world except that law and penalties or judgments upon herself in her
unripe conviction, and suggestions of what ought to be done, came from
that place to which Mrs. Dennistoun had made resort in her perplexities
almost from the very beginning of John's reign there. Mr. Tatham had
been detained beyond his usual time by the importance of the case for
which he was preparing, and a clerk, very impatient t