“They have been dining together somewhere.  Probably at Mr. Hanbury’s” (the Hamley brewer), thought Ellinor.  “But how provoking that he should have come home with papa this night of all nights!”

Two or three times before Mr. Dunster had called on Mr. Wilkins in the evening, as Ellinor knew; but she was not quite aware of the reason for such late visits, and had never put together the two facts—­(as cause and consequence)—­that on such occasions her father had been absent from the office all day, and that there might be necessary business for him to transact, the urgency of which was the motive for Mr. Dunster’s visits.  Mr. Wilkins always seemed to be annoyed by his coming at so late an hour, and spoke of it, resenting the intrusion upon his leisure; and Ellinor, without consideration, adopted her father’s mode of speaking and thinking on the subject, and was rather more angry than he was whenever the obnoxious partner came on business in the evening.  This night was, of all nights, the most ill-purposed time (so Ellinor thought) for a tete-a-tete with her father!  However, there was no doubt in her mind as to what she had to do.  So late as it was, the unwelcome visitor could not stop long; and then she would go down and have her little confidence with her father, and beg him to see Mr. Livingstone when he came next morning, and dismiss him as gently as might be.

She sat on in the window-seat; dreaming waking dreams of future happiness.  She kept losing herself in such thoughts, and became almost afraid of forgetting why she sat there.  Presently she felt cold, and got up to fetch a shawl, in which she muffled herself and resumed her place.  It seemed to her growing very late; the moonlight was coming fuller and fuller into the garden and the blackness of the shadow was more concentrated and stronger.  Surely Mr. Dunster could not have gone away along the dark shrubbery-path so noiselessly but what she must have heard him?  No! there was the swell of voices coming up through the window from her father’s study:  angry voices they were; and her anger rose sympathetically, as she knew that her father was being irritated.  There was a sudden movement, as of chairs pushed hastily aside, and then a mysterious unaccountable noise—­heavy, sudden; and then a slight movement as of chairs again; and then a profound stillness.  Ellinor leaned her head against the side of the window to listen more intently, for some mysterious instinct made her sick and faint.  No sound—­no noise.  Only by-and-by she heard, what we have all heard at such times of intent listening, the beating of the pulses of her heart, and then the whirling rush of blood through her head.  How long did this last?  She never knew.  By-and-by she heard her father’s hurried footstep in his bedroom, next to hers; but when she ran thither to speak to him, and ask him what was amiss—­if anything had been—­if she might come to him now about Mr. Livingstone’s letter, she found that he