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NEW SERIES.

DECEMBER, 1884.

Elinor.

BY MRS. OLIPHANT.

CHAPTER VII. ELINOR had made a discovery in the moment of her deepest calamity. There are fine sentimentalists who consider it a painful thing to find out that you are beloved when you are incapable of responding to the feeling-and a woman of heart and conscience must always be grieved to occasion suffering-but yet it is very doubtful whether such a revelation was ever made in a case where there existed no specially painful or revolting circumstances, without giving at least a passing gratification. It was a surprise to her, and yet after the first moment it was no surprise. She had been aware that there was a sympathy in the mind of Cousin Maurice which she had not found in any one before. He divined what she would do: he understood what she meant, as no one had ever done, not Philip even in the hey-day of their youthful attachment, when they seemed to have but one soul. Even then he had not understood her, and had been perplexed and puzzled by much she did, had thought her romantic, highflown, and fully intended to abate her enthusiasm, and generally to tame her down, as soon as she should be his. Elinor, in the humility of her girlhood, had been willing to believe that Philip would mould her, that she would learn from him, and grow into a different creature through his influence. And so perhaps she might have done. She would no doubt have "lowered to his image day by day" had she become his wife at nineteen, and entered a household which was ruled by motives more sober and practical, as he would have said, than her own; but after the tremendous crisis in her life, in which Philip had forsaken her altogether, Elinor's ideas, too, had suffered a change. She had retained in her mind a vague expectation-rather a hope than an expectation, and yet scarcely warm enough for a hope-that some time his heart might turn to her, and he might perceive that the course she had adopted was the only one possible; but that had grown

fainter and fainter as the year passed on. And now, in the shock of what looked like a double treachery, his image in her mind was suddenly blurred and confused for ever; and as there was no longer any possibility of hoping that it might return to the gracious lines in which her imagination had drawn it, it began to appear to Elinor that he had never existed at all, save in that imagination, and never understood, never entered into her being at all. He and Mabel-Mabel, her little sister, for whom she had been so thankful that the cares and pains of life were to be spared her, whom she had torn herself from weeping, yet glad for the child's sake! Perhaps it was almost more bitter to think that Mabel thus replaced her without a pang, without a thought, and that everybody agreed "since all was over "that Elinor would have "no feeling" on the subject-this was almost more terrible to bear than the certainty that Philip's desertion of her was final. They all thought it reasonable that she should have "no feeling on the subject." This universal abandonment by public opinion, or rather by the opinion of friends, of almost every one who has made a great sacrifice, is one of the things most bitter to bear. Why should Elinor have any feeling on the subject? She had given Philip up for the children. She must have liked the children best-she had taken her own way, and she must expect that others, too, would take theirs. So philosophers will understand that this and that is inevitable, without being the less wounded by it; but Elinor was no philosopher, and the universal consent to set her aside the conviction that it could now be nothing to her what happened, that she had taken her own way, and naturally liked that best, overwhelmed her with a pang beyond words. They had never understood her, then, from the first. She was to them

all an obstinate and self-willed enthusiast, bent on her own way.

But now she knew that there was one who

knew better. She had felt it inarticulately all along -now she knew. He understood, let who would misconceive her. It was all evident to him-the anguish with which she had made up her mind to go to her father, the supreme anguish of the shock, which made her resolution to go to her father feel like a heaven-sent alternative. He nnderstood even that she had no thought of himself, and was scarcely wounded by it, feeling it most natural that the faithful soul should have no thought of anything new, of any substitute or consolation. This he had accepted from the beginning, feeling that her heart was not one likely to change-taking it for granted that the love in his heart must be its own reward. That love was, above all things, a supreme approval of her, of her conduct, her motives, everything she did, and could bear personal loss so long as she lost nothing of her ideal excellence in his eyes. He was not a love-sick or selfish boy, but a serious man, who knew that there were many things in the world more great than that passion of Love, in whose name both men and women perform all manner of treacheries, and think themselves fully justified. He had loved her involuntarily, and had made no show of it, and expected no response; but he had not been able to keep out of his eyes that look, in which tender sympathy and compassion were lighted up by something warmer something which Elinor understood, which had made her feel that sensation of moral support which gives to the sufferer more help and aid than anything else in the world.

All things seemed to return to their usual calm in the little house, while Elinor waited for her father's answer to the letter, in which she told him everything, and that she was ready to come to him, the sooner the better, with the three little boys and the baby, her destitute orphan family, for whom she had sacrificed her own life. Everything seemed to return to the peaceful order of the past, but this was little more than semblance, for already a hundred preparations had begun for the change which Elinor looked forward to as a relief, and was restlessly eager for, in order to escape from herself, and from the other preparations which she could not help hearing of the arrangements for her sister's marriage. She, too, plunged at once, as Mabel was doing, into the bustle of a trousseau; but the trousseau of the little family setting out upon a voyage was very different from all the pleasant extravagance and commotion of the bride's outfit. Elinor and Nurse began to labour at the little garments which were necessary, without a day's delay. It had been thought wise to wait for an answer from Mr. Percival before setting out, that he might make all necessary arrangements on his side for their reception; but it was not necessary to postpone what had to be done at home to make

the children ready for their start the moment his letter should be received. Elinor plunged into this work with an energy that was feverish. It relieved her pain to cut up those breadths of long cloth-to shape, to sew, to contrive, to set all her wits to work how to get so many little garments out of one piece. It required a great deal of thought-happily, happy thought in so many cases but sometimes, as in Elinor's, a styptic to staunch some hidden wound. While she was about this engrossing occupation, her little parlour full of little clothes and baskets of cut-out material, and her needle and scissors in ceaseless operation, Cousin Maurice would come and sit by her, and report to her what he had done, the inquiries he had made, his conclusions as to which was the best ship, the kindest captain, the greatest comfort for the voyage. He never dissuaded her; and she, for her part, began to long for his coming, to feel grateful to him for sitting by her, for making all those inquiries, for putting everything in train. And the children were always delighted to see him arrive. They climbed upon his knees, and on his shoulders, and all over him, making a sort of ladder or gymnastic apparatus of his longsuffering person. When they ran out to their play in the garden after vigorous exercise of this kind, he would take a book and ask leave to read to Elinor as she worked. The books he read were chiefly those he had brought to her about America, about the wild life in the backwoods, which was where her father had gone, and the necessity on the part of emigrants to work with their own hands, and how to be independent of the hired service which was not to be obtained. As he read, visions would come in before Elinor's eyes of the homely rude house, the constant work which would banish all thought, of the children growing up untaught, indeed, but having from their early years the habit of a larger, freer life; of the wide, silent horizons of an unknown country, the separation from all reminders of what she had suffered in the past. Oh, if but the parting were over, the new beginning made! She heard, without hearing, the pages which Mr. Fitzmaurice read. Tears would come into her eyes sometimes and blind her; and then she would turn her head and wipe those silent witnesses away. When the reading came to an end, she would sometimes thank the reader with a smile that went to his heart. "Oh, if we were but there," she would say.

"My dear, I wish you were not so willing to leave us," Mr. Fitzmaurice would reply.

"Not willing to leave you, Cousin Maurice. No words can ever say what you have done for the children and me."

"It is not a matter for words. I should like to be missed-a little."

"You only," said Elinor, "you only "-permitting the tears to start which were so near the

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