the table. She did not speak when he had ended his statement. She was silent for whole minutes afterwards; he went on speaking out of very agitation and awkwardness.
“It was all the rascal Dunster’s doing, I’ve no doubt,” said he, trying to account for the entire loss of Mr. Wilkins’s fortune.
To his surprise she lifted up her white stony face, and said slowly and faintly, but with almost solemn calmness:
“Mr. Ness, you must never allow Mr. Dunster to be blamed for this!”
“My dear Ellinor, there can be no doubt about it. Your father himself always referred to the losses he had sustained by Dunster’s disappearance.”
Ellinor covered her face with her hands. “God forgive us all,” she said, and relapsed into the old unbearable silence. Mr. Ness had undertaken to discuss her future plans with her, and he was obliged to go on.
“Now, my dear child—I have known you since you were quite a little girl, you know—we must try not to give way to feeling”—he himself was choking; she was quite quiet—“but think what is to be done. You will have the rent of this house, and we have a very good offer for it—a tenant on lease of seven years at a hundred and twenty pounds a year”
