“She’s got a devil of a tongue of her own, you see, Whitelaw,” said the bailiff, with a savage glance at his daughter; “but she don’t mean above a quarter what she says—­and when her time comes, she’ll do as she’s bid, or she’s no child of mine.”

“O, I forgive her,” replied Mr. Whitelaw, with a placid air of superiority; “I’m not the man to bear malice against a pretty woman, and to my mind a pretty woman looks all the prettier when she’s in a passion.  I’m not in a hurry, you see, Carley; I can bide my time; but I shall never take a mistress to Wyncomb unless I can take the one I like.”

After this particular evening, Mr. Whitelaw’s presence seemed more than ever disagreeable to poor Ellen.  He had the air of her fate somehow, sitting rooted to the hearth night after night, and she grew to regard him with a half superstitious horror, as if he possessed some occult power over her, and could bend her to his wishes in spite of herself.  The very quietude of the man became appalling to her.  Such a man seemed capable of accomplishing anything by the mere force of persistence, by the negative power that lay in his silent nature.

“I suppose he means to sit in that room night after night, smoking his pipe and staring with those pale stupid eyes of his, till I change my mind and promise to marry him,” Ellen said to herself, as she meditated angrily on the annoyance of Mr. Whitelaw’s courtship.  “He may sit there till his hair turns gray—­if ever such red hair does turn to anything better than itself—­and he’ll find no change in me.  I wish Frank were here to keep up my courage.  I think if he were to ask me to run away with him, I should be tempted to say yes, at the risk of bringing ruin upon both of us; anything to escape out of the power of that man.  But come what may, I won’t endure it much longer.  I’ll run away to service soon after Christmas, and father will only have himself to thank for the loss of me.”

It was Mr. Whitelaw who appeared as principal guest at the Grange on Christmas-day; Mr. Whitelaw, supported on this occasion by a widowed cousin of his who had kept house for him for some years, and who bore a strong family likeness to him both in person and manner, and Ellen Carley thought that it was impossible for the world to contain a more disagreeable pair.  These were the guests who consumed great quantities of Ellen’s pies and puddings, and who sat under her festal garlands of holly and laurel.  She had been especially careful to hang no scrap of mistletoe, which might have afforded Mr. Whitelaw an excuse for a practical display of his gallantry; a fact which did not escape the playful observation of his cousin, Mrs. Tadman.

“Young ladies don’t often forget to put up a bit of mistletoe,” said this matron, “when there’s a chance of them they like being by;” and she glanced in a meaning way from Ellen to the master of Wyncomb Farm.

“Miss Carley isn’t like the generality of young ladies,” Mr. Whitelaw answered with a glum look, and his kinswoman was fain to drop the subject.