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I should come with you. For, after all—”
    “You would be very much in the way. Make your bow to Miss Rochdale, and be off!” He was obeyed, but reluctantly. As the door closed behind him Carlyon turned to Elinor and said without preamble, “It is a fortunate circumstance that you were here. I fancy I have no need to explain to you that the man now lying at Wisborough Green is my cousin?” “Indeed, no! I had collected that he must be the man I was supposed to be going to marry.” “He is the man you are going to marry,” he replied, with decision.
    She stared at him. “What can you possibly mean?”
    “You heard my brother: Cheviot is not yet dead. If we can reach Wisborough Green while he still breathes and is in possession of his senses, you may be married to him, and he may leave his estate away from me. Come, I have no time to lose!”
    “No!” she cried. “No, I will not do it!”
    “You must do it: the matter is now become of too much moment to allow of my permitting you to talk yourself out of arguments. While there was no immediate prospect of Eustace’s death I might respect the scruples which led you to refuse to marry him, but all that is changed. In doing what I tell you now you will run no risk of discovering disagreeable consequences in the future. You will be a widow before the morning.” “There is one consequence that remains unchanged!” she retorted. “You are asking me to sell myself, to marry a dying man for the advantages it may bring me, and every feeling must be offended by such—”
    “I am doing no such thing. I offer you nothing.”
    “You said—you gave me to understand I was to become, in plain words, your pensioner!” “What I said an hour ago is no longer to the purpose. I am asking you to help me.” “Oh, it is wrong! I know it is wrong, and crazy besides!” she exclaimed, wringing her hands. “How can you think to put me in such a position? Can you not perceive—” “Yes, I can perceive, but I am not thinking very much of you at this present. I will engage to shield you to the best of my power from scandalous whisperings, and I believe I know how that may be achieved, but all that is for the future.”
    “Oh, you are abominable!” she said indignantly.
    “I am anything you please, Miss Rochdale, but there will be time enough to tell me so later. I am going now to fetch my curricle up to the house. I shall not be many minutes.” “Lord Carlyon, I will not go with you!”
    He paused with his hand on the door and looked back at her. “Miss Rochdale, you have been very frank with me, and I with you. We know each other’s circumstances. I tell you now
    that in doing as I bid you, you have nothing to lose. Have no fear that the world will look on you askance! Curiosity and conjecture there may be, but who will dare to cast a slur on you while you are acknowledged by Carlyon? Behave like the sensible woman I believe you to be, and do not make a piece of work about nothing! Now, I have stayed talking too long already, and must go for my curricle.”
    She was left without a word to say. The conviction that the affair was not so simple, almost so commonplace, as it seemed when he described it could not be banished, but, whether from being a good deal tired by the events of the day, or from her acknowledged dread of having to present herself at Five Mile Ash on the morrow with a lame excuse trembling on her lips, she felt herself to be quite unequal either to continue arguing, or to defy one who seemed to be too much in the habit of ordering the lives of others to brook any opposition to his will. Accordingly, when the old servant came into the room a few minutes later to tell her that his lordship was waiting for her at the door, she rose up meekly out of her chair and accompanied him out to the curricle. She was able to see in the now bright moonlight that her trunk and her valise were already corded onto the boot, and, absurdly enough, that seemed to settle