a snort of indignation: she
to be compared--but Elinor met his eyes with scornful composure and
defiance, and John was obliged to calm himself. "There's no analogy,"
he said; "Lady Mariamne is an old campaigner. She's up to everything.
Besides, a sister-in-law--if it comes to that--is not a very near
relation. No one will judge you by her." He would not be led into any
discussion of the other, whose name, alas! Elinor intended to bear.

"If it comes to that. Perhaps you think," said Elinor, with a smile of
fine scorn, "that you will prevent it ever coming to that?"

"Oh, no," he said, "I'm very humble; I don't think much of my own powers
in that way: nothing that I can do will affect it, if Providence doesn't
take it in hand."

"You really think it's a big enough thing to invoke Providence about?"

"If Providence looks after the sparrows as we are told," said John, "it
certainly may be expected to step in to save a nice girl like you,
Nelly, from--from connections you'll soon get to hate--and--and a shady
man!"

She turned upon him with sparkling eyes in a sudden blaze of indignation.
"How dare you! how dare you!"

"I dare a great deal more than that to save you. You must hear me,
Nelly: they're all badly spoken of, not one, but all. They are a shady
lot--excuse a man's way of talking. I don't know what other words to
use--partly from misfortune, but more from---- Nelly, Nelly, how could
you, a high-minded, well-brought-up girl like you, tolerate that?"

She turned upon him again, breathing hard with restrained rage and
desperation; evidently she was at a loss for words to convey her
indignant wrath: and at last in sheer inability to express the vehemence
of her feelings she fastened on one word and repeated "well-brought-up!"
in accents of scorn.

"Yes," said John, "my aunt and you may not always understand each other,
but she's proved her case to every fair mind by yourself, Elinor. A girl
could not be better brought up than you've been: and you could not put
up with it, not unless you changed your nature as well as your name."

"With what?" she said, "with what?" They had gone up and down the
sloping sides of the combe, through the rustling copse, sometimes where
there was a path, sometimes where there was none, treading over the
big bushes of ling and the bell-heather, all bursting into bloom, past
groups of primeval firs and seedling beeches, self-sown, over little
hillocks and hollows formed of rocks or