She expected that he would make some answer to her, but he did not.  He was quite silent; and Elizabeth presently began to question with herself whether she had said something dreadful.  She was busily taking up her own words, since he had not saved her the trouble.  She found herself growing very much ashamed of them.

“I suppose that was a foolish speech,” she said, after a few moments of perfect silence, —­ “a speech of impatience.”

But Winthrop neither endorsed nor denied her opinion; he said nothing about it; and Elizabeth was exceedingly mortified.

“If you wanted to rebuke me,” she thought, “you could not have done it better.  I suppose there is no rebuke so sharp as that one is obliged to administer to oneself.  And your cool keeping silence is about as effectual a way of telling me that you have no interest in my concerns as even you could have devised.”

Elizabeth’s eyes must have swallowed the landscape whole, for they certainly took in no distinct part of it.

“How are you going to make yourself comfortable here?” said Winthrop presently; —­ “these rooms are unfurnished.”

She might have said that she did not expect to be comfortable anywhere; but she swallowed that too.

“I will go and see what I can do in the way of getting some furniture together,” he went on.  “I hope you will be able to find some way of taking rest in the mean time —­ though I confess I do not see how.”

“Pray do not!” said Elizabeth starting up, and her whole manner and expression changing.  “I am sure you are tired to death now.”

“Not at all.  I slept last night.”

“How much?  Pray do not go looking after anything!  You will trouble me very much.”

“I should be sorry to do that.”

“I can get all the rest I want.”

“Where?”

“On the rocks —­ on the grass.”

“Might do for a little while,” said Winthrop; —­ “I hope it will; but I must try for something better.”

“Where can you find anything —­ in this region?”

“I don’t know,” said he; “but it must be found.  If not in this region, in some other.”

“To-morrow, Mr. Landholm.”

“To-morrow —­ has its own work,” said he; and went.

“Will he go to-morrow?” thought Elizabeth, with a pang at her heart.  “Oh, I wish —­ no, I dare not wish —­ that I had never been born!  What am I to do with myself?”

Conscience suggested very quietly that something might be done; but Elizabeth bade conscience wait for another time, though granting all it advanced.  She put that by, as she did Mrs. Nettley and Clam who both presently came where Winthrop had been standing, to make advances of a different nature.

“What’ll I do, Miss ’Lizabeth?” said the latter, in a tone that argued a somewhat dismal view of affairs.

“Anything you can find to do.”

“Can’t find nothin, —­” said Clam, “’cept Karen.  One corner of the house is filled enough with her; and the rest ha’n’t got nothin’ in it.”