nothing to each other. I am engaged to be married. I should not have told you if you had not been so kind. Thank you. But go now.”
The poor young man’s face fell, and he became almost as white as she was for the instant. After a moment’s reflection, he took her hand in his, and said:
“May God bless you, and him too, whoever he be! But if you want a friend, I may be that friend, may I not? and try to prove that my words of regard were true, in a better and higher sense than I used them at first.” And kissing her passive hand, he was gone and she was left sitting alone.
But solitude was not what she could bear. She went quickly upstairs, and took a strong dose of sal-volatile, even while she heard Miss Monro calling to her.
“My dear, who was that gentleman that has been closeted with you in the drawing-room all this time?”
And then, without listening to Ellinor’s reply, she went on:
“Mrs. Jackson has been here” (it was at Mrs. Jackson’s house that Mr. Dunster lodged), “wanting to know if we could tell her where Mr. Dunster was, for he never came home last night at all. And you were in the drawing-room with—who did you say he
