these polite hints with one bold form of answer.
She first admitted the existence of these reports about the Monktons
which her friends were unwilling to specify distinctly, and then
declared that they were infamous calumnies. The hereditary taint had
died out of the family generations back. Alfred was the best, the
kindest, the sanest of human beings. He loved study and retirement; Ada
sympathized with his tastes, and had made her choice unbiased; if any
more hints were dropped about sacrificing her by her marriage, those
hints would be viewed as so many insults to her mother, whose affection
for her it was monstrous to call in question. This way of talking
silenced people, but did not convince them. They began to suspect, what
was indeed the actual truth, that Mrs. Elmslie was a selfish, worldly,
grasping woman, who wanted to get her daughter well married, and cared
nothing for consequences as long as she saw Ada mistress of the greatest
establishment in the whole county.

It seemed, however, as if there was some fatality at work to prevent
the attainment of Mrs. Elmslie's great object in life. Hardly was one
obstacle to the ill-omened marriage removed by my father's death before
another succeeded it in the shape of anxieties and difficulties caused
by the delicate state of Ada's health. Doctors were consulted in all
directions, and the result of their advice was that the marriage must be
deferred, and that Miss Elmslie must leave England for a certain time,
to reside in a warmer climate--the south of France, if I remember
rightly. Thus it happened that just before Alfred came of age Ada and
her mother departed for the Continent, and the union of the two young
people was understood to be indefinitely postponed. Some curiosity was
felt in the neighborhood as to what Alfred Monkton would do under these
circumstances. Would he follow his lady-love? would he go yachting?
would he throw open the doors of the old Abbey at last, and endeavor
to forget the absence of Ada and the postponement of his marriage in a
round of gayeties? He did none of these things. He simply remained at
Wincot, living as suspiciously strange and solitary a life as his father
had lived before him. Literally, there was now no companion for him
at the Abbey but the old priest--the Monktons, I should have mentioned
before, were Roman Catholics--who had held the office of tutor to Alfred
from his earliest years. He came of age, and there was not even so