the better for me in this case.  I’m above their silly antiquated prejudices, and shall be only too glad when the fitting time comes to make Ellinor my wife.  After all, a prosperous attorney’s daughter may not be considered an unsuitable match for me—­younger son as I am.  Ellinor will make a glorious woman three or four years hence; just the style my father admires—­such a figure, such limbs.  I’ll be patient, and bide my time, and watch my opportunities, and all will come right.”

So he bade Ellinor farewell in a most reluctant and affectionate manner, although his words might have been spoken out in Hamley market-place, and were little different from what he said to Miss Monro.  Mr. Wilkins half expected a disclosure to himself of the love which he suspected in the young man; and when that did not come, he prepared himself for a confidence from Ellinor.  But she had nothing to tell him, as he very well perceived from the child’s open unembarrassed manner when they were left alone together after dinner.  He had refused an invitation, and shaken off Mr. Ness, in order to have this confidential tete-a-tete with his motherless girl; and there was nothing to make confidence of.  He was half inclined to be angry; but then he saw that, although sad, she was so much at peace with herself and with the world, that he, always an optimist, began to think the young man had done wisely in not tearing open the rosebud of her feelings too prematurely.

The next two years passed over in much the same way—­or a careless spectator might have thought so.  I have heard people say, that if you look at a regiment advancing with steady step over a plain on a review-day, you can hardly tell that they are not merely marking time on one spot of ground, unless you compare their position with some other object by which to mark their progress, so even is the repetition of the movement.  And thus the sad events of the future life of this father and daughter were hardly perceived in their steady advance, and yet over the monotony and flat uniformity of their days sorrow came marching down upon them like an armed man.  Long before Mr. Wilkins had recognised its shape, it was approaching him in the distance—­as, in fact, it is approaching all of us at this very time; you, reader, I, writer, have each our great sorrow bearing down upon us.  It may be yet beyond the dimmest point of our horizon, but in the stillness of the night our hearts shrink at the sound of its coming footstep.  Well is it for those who fall into the hands of the Lord rather than into the hands of men; but worst of all is it for him who has hereafter to mingle the gall of remorse with the cup held out to him by his doom.