xistence in thought as well as in fact. And she had
succeeded for a long time in doing this. But now in a moment all her
precautions were thrown to the winds. He came into her memory with a
sudden rush for which she was no way responsible, breaking all the
barriers she had put up against him: that he should have known where she
was all this time, and never disturbed her, respected her solitude all
these years--that when the moment of need came he should, without a word
to conciliate her, without an explanation or an apology, have put his
fate into her hands---- To the reader who understands I need not say
more of the effect upon the mind of Elinor, hasty, generous, impatient
as she was of these two strange facts. There are many in the world who
would have given quite a different explanation--who would have made out
of the fact that he had not disturbed her only the explanation that
Phil Compton was tired of his wife and glad to get rid of her at any
price: and who would have seen in his appeal to her now only audacity
combined with the conviction that she would not compromise herself by
saying anything more than she could help about him. I need not say which
of these interpretations would have been the true one. But the first
will understand and not the other what it was that for the first time
for eighteen years awakened a struggle and controversy which she could
not ignore, and vainly endeavoured to overcome, in Elinor's heart.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Elinor had not been three days gone, indeed her mother had but just
received a hurried note announcing her arrival in London, when as she
sat alone in the house which had become so silent, Mrs. Dennistoun
suddenly became aware of a rising of sound of the most jubilant, almost
riotous description. It began by the barking of Yarrow, the old colley,
who was fond of lying at the gate watching in a philosophic way of his
own the mild traffic of the country road, the children trooping by to
school, who hung about him in clusters, with lavish offerings of crust
and scraps of biscuit, and all the leisurely country _flaneurs_ whom the
good dog despised, not thinking that he himself did nothing but _flaner_
at his own door in the sun. A bark from Yarrow was no small thing in
the stillness of the spring afternoon, and little Urisk, the terrier,
who lay wrapt in dreams at Mrs. Dennistoun's feet, heard where he lay
entranced in the folds of sleep and cocked up an eager ear and utt