The effect of her behaviour was far more than she had intended.She kept Mr.Livingstone,it is true,from observing her father,but she also riveted his attention on herself.He had thought her very pretty and agreeable during dinner:but after dinner he considered her bewitching,irresistible.He dreamed of her all night,and wakened up the next morning to a calculation of how far his income would allow him to furnish his pretty new parsonage with that crowning blessing,a wife.For a day or two he did up little sums,and sighed,and thought of Ellinor,her face listening with admiring interest to his sermons,her arm passed into his as they went together round the parish;her sweet voice instructing classes in his schools--turn where he would,in his imagination Ellinor's presence rose up before him.
The consequence was that he wrote an offer,which he found a far more perplexing piece of composition than a sermon;a real hearty expression of love,going on,over all obstacles,to a straightforward explanation of his present prospects and future hopes,and winding up with the information that on the succeeding morning he would call to know whether he might speak to Mr.Wilkins on the subject of this letter.It was given to Ellinor in the evening,as she was sitting with Miss Monro in the library.Mr.
Wilkins was dining out,she hardly knew where,as it was a sudden engagement,of which he had sent word from the office--a gentleman's dinner-party,she supposed,as he had dressed in Hamley without coming home.Ellinor turned over the letter when it was brought to her,as some people do when they cannot recognise the handwriting,as if to discover from paper or seal what two moments would assure them of,if they opened the letter and looked at the signature.Ellinor could not guess who had written it by any outward sign;but the moment she saw the name "Herbert Livingstone,"the meaning of the letter flashed upon her and she coloured all over.She put the letter away,unread,for a few minutes,and then made some excuse for leaving the room and going upstairs.When safe in her bed-chamber,she read the young man's eager words with a sense of self-reproach.
How must she,engaged to one man,have been behaving to another,if this was the result of a single evening's interview?The self-reproach was unjustly bestowed;but with that we have nothing to do.
She made herself very miserable;and at last went down with a heavy heart to go on with Dante,and rummage up words in the dictionary.
All the time she seemed to Miss Monro to be plodding on with her Italian more diligently and sedately than usual,she was planning in her own mind to speak to her father as soon as he returned (and he had said that he should not be late),and beg him to undo the mischief she had done by seeing Mr.Livingstone the next morning,and frankly explaining the real state of affairs to him.But she wanted to read her letter again,and think it all over in peace;and so,at an early hour,she wished Miss Monro good-night,and went up into her own room above the drawing-room,and overlooking the flower-garden and shrubbery-path to the stable-yard,by which her father was sure to return.She went upstairs and studied her letter well,and tried to recall all her speeches and conduct on that miserable evening--as she thought it then--not knowing what true misery was.Her head ached,and she put out the candle,and went and sat on the window-seat,looking out into the moonlit garden,watching for her father.
She opened the window;partly to cool her forehead,partly to enable her to call down softly when she should see him coming along.By-and-by the door from the stable-yard into the shrubbery clicked and opened,and in a moment she saw Mr.Wilkins moving through the bushes;but not alone,Mr.Dunster was with him,and the two were talking together in rather excited tones,immediately lost to hearing,however,as they entered Mr.Wilkins's study by the outer door.
"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.