f drawing out
everything that's worst in men."

"It seems to make you hate me, John, which I don't think I have
deserved."

"Oh, no, I don't hate you. It's a consequence, I suppose, of use and
wont. It makes little difference to me----"

She gave him another look which he did not understand--a wistful look,
appealing to something, he did not know what--to his ridiculous
partiality, he thought, and that stubborn domestic affection to which it
was of so little importance what she did, as long as she was Elinor; and
then she said with a woman's soft, endless pertinacity, "Then you think
I may go?"

He sprang from his seat with that impatient despair which is equally
characteristic of the man. "Go!" he said, "when you are called upon by
law to vindicate a man's character, and that man your husband! I ought
not to be surprised at anything with my experience, but, Elinor, you
take away my breath."

She only smiled, giving him once more that look of appeal.

"How can you think of it?" he said. "The subpoena is enough to keep any
reasonable being, besides the other motive. You must not budge. I should
feel my own character involved, as well as yours, if after consulting me
on the subject you were guilty of an evasion after all."

"It would not be your fault, John."

"Elinor! you are mad--it must not be done," he cried. "Don't defy me, I
am capable of informing upon you, and having you stopped--by force--if
you do not give this idea up."

"By force!" she said, with her nostril dilating. "I shall go, of course,
if I am threatened."

"Then Philip must not go. Do you know what has happened in the family to
which he belongs, and must belong, whether you like it or not? Do you
know--that the boy may be Lord Lomond before the week is out? that his
uncle is dying, and that your husband is the heir?"

She turned round upon him slowly, fixing her eyes upon his, with simple
astonishment and no more in her look. Her mind, so absorbed in other
thoughts, hardly took in what he could mean.

"Have you not heard this, Elinor?"

"But there is Hal," she said, "Hal--the other brother--who comes first."

"Hal is dead, and the one in India is dead, and Lord St. Serf is dying.
The boy is the heir. You must not, you cannot, take him away. It is
impossible, Elinor, it is against all nature and justice. You have had
him for all these years; his father has a right to his heir."

"Oh, John!" she cried, in a bitter note of reproach, "oh,