eon,
where Elinor awaited her, pale and anxious, and where Philip followed,
so unlike himself, that no explanation had yet taken place between them.
And the luncheon was as miserable a pretence at a meal as the breakfast
had been--worse as a repetition, yet better in so far that poor Pippo,
with his boyish wholesome appetite, was by this time too hungry to be
restrained even by the unusual burden of his unhappiness, and ate
heartily, although he was bitterly ashamed of so doing: which perhaps
made him a little better, and certainly did a great deal of good to the
ladies, who thus were convinced that whatever the matter might be, he
was not ill at least. He was about to return up-stairs after luncheon
was over, but Elinor caught him by the arm: "You are not going to your
room again, Pippo?"

"I--have not finished my reading," he said.

"I have a claim before your reading. I have a great deal to say to you,
and I cannot put it off any longer. It must be said----"

"As you please, mother," he replied, with an air of endurance. And he
opened the door for her and followed her up to the drawing-room, the
three generations going one before the other, the anxious grandmother
first, full of sympathy for both; the mother trembling in every limb,
feeling the great crisis of her life before her; the boy with his heart
seared, half bitter, half contemptuous of the explanation which he had
forestalled, which came too late. Mrs. Dennistoun turned and kissed
first one and then the other with quivering lips. "Oh, Pippo, be kind
to your mother; she never will have such need of your kindness again in
all your life." The boy could almost have struck her for this advice.
It raised a kind of savage passion in him to be told to be kind to his
mother--kind to her, when he had held her above all beings on the earth,
and prided himself all his life upon his devotion to her! What Mrs.
Dennistoun said to Elinor I cannot tell, but she clasped her hands and
gave her an imploring look, which was almost as bitterly taken as her
appeal to Philip. It besought her to tell everything, to hide nothing;
and what was Elinor's meaning but to tell everything, to lay bare her
heart?

But once more at this moment an interruption--the most wonderful and
unthought-of of all interruptions--came. I suppose it must have been
announced by the usual summons at the street-door, and that in their
agitation they had not heard it. But all that I know is, that when Mrs.