party
looked--but for that agitation in Elinor's face, which she could not
master--as if the ladies were receiving and he paying a morning call.
The other two, however, did not sit down. Young Philip, confused and
excited, went away to the second room, the little back drawing-room of
the little London house, which can never be made to look anything but
an anteroom--never a habitable place--and went to the window, and stood
there as if he were looking out, though the window was of coloured
glass, and there was nothing to be seen. Mrs. Dennistoun stood with her
hand upon the back of a chair, her heart beating too, and yet the most
collected of them all, waiting, with her eyes on Elinor, for a sign to
know her will, whether she should go or stay. It was the visitor who was
the first to speak.

"Let me beg you," he said, with a little impatience in his voice, "to
sit down too. It is evident that Nell's reception of me is not likely to
be so warm as to make it unpleasant for a third party. There was a
fourth party in the room a minute ago, if my eyes did not deceive me.
Ah!"--his glance went rapidly to where Philip's tall boyish figure, with
his back turned, was visible against the further window--"that's all
right," he said, "now I presume everybody's here."

"Had we expected your visit," said Mrs. Dennistoun, faltering, after a
moment, as Elinor did not speak, "we should have been--better prepared
to receive you, Mr. Compton."

"That's not spoken with your usual cleverness," he said, with a laugh.
"You used to be a great deal too clever for me, you and Nell too. But if
she did not expect to see me, I don't know what she thought I was made
of--everything that is bad, I suppose: and yet you know I could have
worried your life out of you if I had liked, Nell."

She turned to him for the first time, and, putting her hands together,
said almost inaudibly, "I know--I know. I have thought of that, and I am
not ungrateful."

"Grateful! Well, perhaps you have not much call for that, poor little
woman. I don't doubt I behaved like a brute, and you were quite right in
doing what you did; but you've taken it out of me since, Nell, all the
same."

Then there was again a silence, broken only by the labouring, which she
could not quite conceal, of her breath.

"You wouldn't believe me," he resumed after a moment, "if I were to set
up a sentimental pose, like a sort of a disconsolate widower, eh, would
you? Of course it was a po