Returns by the mail train to-night, thought Eleanor to herself, as she strove to screw up her courage—away again to-night—then it must be now or never; and she again sat down, having risen to go.

She wished the ordeal could have been postponed: she had fully made up her mind to do the deed, but she had not made up her mind to do it this very day; and now she felt ill at ease, astray, and in difficulty.

“Mary,” she began, “I must see your brother before he goes back.”

“Oh yes, of course,” said the other; “I know he’ll be delighted to see you;” and she tried to treat it as a matter of course, but she was not the less surprised; for Mary and Eleanor had daily talked over John Bold and his conduct, and his love, and Mary would insist on calling Eleanor her sister, and would scold her for not calling Bold by his Christian name; and Eleanor would half confess her love, but like a modest maiden would protest against such familiarities even with the name of her lover: and so they talked hour after hour, and Mary Bold, who was much the elder, looked forward with happy confidence to the day when Eleanor would not be ashamed to call her her sister. She was, however, fully sure that just at present Eleanor would be much more likely to avoid her brother than to seek him.

“Mary, I must see your brother, now, to-day, and beg from him a great favour;” and she spoke with a solemn air, not at all usual to her; and then she went on, and opened to her friend all her plan, her well- weighed scheme for saving her father from a sorrow which would, she said, if it lasted, bring him to his grave. “But, Mary,” she continued, “you must now, you know, cease any joking about me and Mr. Bold; you must now say no more about that; I am not ashamed to beg this favour from your brother, but when I have done so, there can never be anything further between us;” and this she said with a staid and solemn air, quite worthy of Jephthah’s daughter or of Iphigenia either.

It was quite clear that Mary Bold did not follow the argument: that Eleanor Harding should appeal, on behalf of her father, to Bold’s better feelings, seemed to Mary quite natural; it seemed quite natural that he should relent, overcome by such filial tears, and by so much beauty; but, to her thinking, it was at any rate equally natural, that having relented, John should put his arm round his mistress’s waist, and say, “Now having settled that, let us be man and wife, and all will end happily!” Why his good nature should not be rewarded, when such reward would operate to the disadvantage of none, Mary, who had more sense than romance, could not understand; and she said as much.

Eleanor, however, was firm, and made quite an eloquent speech to support her own view of the question: she could not condescend, she said, to ask such a favour on any other terms than those proposed. Mary might, perhaps, think her high-flown, but she had her own ideas, and she could not submit to sacrifice her self-respect.

“But I am sure you love him,—don’t you?” pleaded Mary, “and I am sure he loves you better than anything in the world.”

Eleanor was going to make another speech, but a tear came to each eye, and she could not; so she pretended to blow her nose, and walked to the window, and made a little inward call on her own courage, and finding herself somewhat sustained, said sententiously,—“Mary, this is nonsense.”

“But you do love him,” said Mary, who had followed her friend to the window, and now spoke with her arms close wound round the other’s waist. “You do love him with all your heart,—you know you do; I defy you to deny it.”

“I—” commenced Eleanor, turning sharply round to refute the charge; but the intended falsehood stuck in her throat, and never came to utterance. She could not deny her love, so she took plentifully to tears, and leant upon her friend’s bosom and sobbed there, and protested that, love or no love, it would make no difference in her resolve, and called Mary, a thousand times, the most cruel of girls, and swore her to secrecy by a hundred oaths, and ended by declaring that the girl who could betray her friend’s love, even to a brother, would be as black a traitor as a soldier in a garrison who should open the city gates