cted merely by thin slippers; add
to this a deep cut under one ear, which only the cold prevented from
bleeding profusely, a white face scratched and bruised, and a frame
hardly able to support itself through fatigue; and you may fancy my first
fright was not much allayed when I had had leisure to examine her.

'My dear young lady,' I exclaimed, 'I'll stir nowhere, and hear nothing,
till you have removed every article of your clothes, and put on dry
things; and certainly you shall not go to Gimmerton to-night, so it is
needless to order the carriage.'

'Certainly I shall,' she said; 'walking or riding: yet I've no objection
to dress myself decently. And--ah, see how it flows down my neck now!
The fire does make it smart.'

She insisted on my fulfilling her directions, before she would let me
touch her; and not till after the coachman had been instructed to get
ready, and a maid set to pack up some necessary attire, did I obtain her
consent for binding the wound and helping to change her garments.

'Now, Ellen,' she said, when my task was finished and she was seated in
an easy-chair on the hearth, with a cup of tea before her, 'you sit down
opposite me, and put poor Catherine's baby away: I don't like to see it!
You mustn't think I care little for Catherine, because I behaved so
foolishly on entering: I've cried, too, bitterly--yes, more than any one
else has reason to cry. We parted unreconciled, you remember, and I
sha'n't forgive myself. But, for all that, I was not going to sympathise
with him--the brute beast! Oh, give me the poker! This is the last
thing of his I have about me:' she slipped the gold ring from her third
finger, and threw it on the floor. 'I'll smash it!' she continued,
striking it with childish spite, 'and then I'll burn it!' and she took
and dropped the misused article among the coals. 'There! he shall buy
another, if he gets me back again. He'd be capable of coming to seek me,
to tease Edgar. I dare not stay, lest that notion should possess his
wicked head! And besides, Edgar has not been kind, has he? And I won't
come suing for his assistance; nor will I bring him into more trouble.
Necessity compelled me to seek shelter here; though, if I had not learned
he was out of the way, I'd have halted at the kitchen, washed my face,
warmed myself, got you to bring what I wanted, and departed again to
anywhere out of the reach of my accursed--of that incarnate goblin! Ah,
he was in such a f