“But I—­” began Robert.

“Do you think I will burden you with the support of a whole family?” said Ellen.

“Ellen, you don’t know what I would be willing to do if I could have you,” cried the young man, fervently.  And he was quite in earnest.  At that moment it seemed to him that he could even come and live there in that house, with the hideous lamp, and the crushed-plush furniture, and the eager mother; that he could go without anything and everything to support them if only he could have this girl who was fairly storming his heart.

“I wouldn’t be willing to have you,” said Ellen, firmly.  “As things are now I cannot marry you, Mr. Lloyd.  Then, too,” she added, “you asked me just now how many people looked at all this labor as I do, and I dare say not very many.  I know not many of your kind of people.  I know how your uncle looks at it.  It would hurt you socially to marry a girl from a shoe-shop.  Whether it is just or not, it would hurt you.  It cannot be, as matters are now, Mr. Lloyd.”

“But you love me?”

Ellen suddenly, as if pushed by some mighty force outside herself, leaned towards him, and he caught her in his arms.  He tipped back her face and kissed her, and looked down at her masterfully.

“We will wait a little,” he said.  “I will never give you up as long as I live if you love me, Ellen.”

Chapter XXXIX

When Ellen went out into the sitting-room that evening, after Robert Lloyd had taken leave, her father and mother were still there, although the callers had gone.  Both of them looked furtively at her as she went through the room to the kitchen to get a lamp, then they looked at each other.  Fanny was glowing with half shamefaced triumph; Andrew was pale.  Ellen did not re-enter the room, but simply paused at the door, before going up-stairs, and they had a vision of a face in a tumult of emotions, with eyes and hair illuminated to excess of brilliancy by the lamp which she held.

“Good-night,” she called, and her voice did not sound like her own.

“Something has happened,” Fanny whispered to Andrew, when Ellen’s chamber door had closed.

“Do you suppose she’s goin’ to?” whispered Andrew, in a sort of breathless fashion.  His eyes on his wife’s face were sad and wistful.

“Hush!  How do I know?” asked Fanny.  “I always told you he liked her.”

However, Fanny looked disturbed.  Presently she went out in the kitchen to mix up some bread, and she wept a little, standing in a corner, with her face hidden in the folds of an old shawl which hung there on a peg.  Dictatorial towards circumstances as she was when her beloved daughter came in question, and proud as she was at the prospect of an advantageous marriage for her, she remembered her sister in the asylum, she remembered how Andrew was out of work, and she could not understand how it was to be managed.  And all this was aside from the grief which she would have felt in any case at losing Ellen.