and Ellinor, watching till Miss Monro's eyes
were otherwise engaged, always turned with
trembling hands and a beating heart to the
reports of the various Courts of Law. In them
she found—at first rarely—the name she sought
for, the name she dwelt upon, as if every letter
were a study. Mr. Losh and Mr. Duncombe
appeared for the plaintiff, Mr. Smythe and Mr.
Corbet for the defendant. In a year or two that
name appeared more frequently, and generally
took precedence of the other, whatever it might
be; then on especial occasions his speeches were
repeated at full length, as if his words were
accounted weighty; and by-and-by she saw that he
had been appointed a Queen's Counsel. And this
was all she ever heard or saw about him; his
once familiar name never passed her lips except
in hurried whispers to Dixon, when he came to
stay with them. Ellinor had had no idea when
she had parted from Mr. Corbet how total the
separation between them was henceforward to be,
so much seemed left unfinished, unexplained. It
was so difficult, at first, to break herself of the
habit of constant mental reference to him; and
for many a long year she kept thinking that
surely some kind fortune would bring them
together again, and all this heart-sickness and
melancholy estrangement from each other would
then seem to both only as an ugly dream that had
passed away in the morning light.

The dean was an old man, but there was a
canon who was older still, and whose death had
been expected by many, and speculated upon by
some, any time this last ten years. Canon
Holdsworth was too old to show active kindness to any
one; the good dean's life was full of thoughtful
and benevolent deeds. But he was taken, and
the other left. Ellinor looked out at the vacant
deanery with tearful eyes, the last thing at night,
the first in the morning. But it is pretty nearly
the same with church dignitaries as with kings;
the dean is dead, long live the dean! A clergyman
from a distant county was appointed, and
all the Close was astir to learn and hear all
particulars connected with him. Luckily he came
in at the tag-end of one of the noble families in
the Peerage; so, at any rate, all his future
associates could learn with tolerable certainty that he
was forty-two years of age, married, and with
eight daughters and one son. The deanery,
formerly so quiet and sedate a dwelling of the one
old man, was now to be filled with noise and
merriment. Iron railings were being placed
before three windows, evidently to be the nursery.
In the summer publicity of open windows and
doors, the sound of the busy carpenters was
perpetually heard all over the Close; and by-and-by
waggon-loads of furniture and carriage-loads of
people began to arrive. Neither Miss Monro
nor Ellinor felt themselves of sufficient importance
or station to call on the new comers, but
they were as well acquainted with the proceedings
of the family as if they had been in daily
intercourse; they knew that the eldest Miss
Beauchamp was seventeen, and very pretty, only
one shoulder was higher than the other; that she
was dotingly fond of dancing, and talked a great
deal in a tête-à-tête, but not much if her mamma
was by, and never opened her lips at all if the
dean was in the room; that the next sister was
wonderfully clever, and was supposed to know
all the governess could teach her, and to have
private lessons in Greek and mathematics from
her father; and so on down to the little boy at
the preparatory school and the baby-girl in arms.
Moreover, Miss Monro, at any rate, could have
stood an examination as to the number of
servants at the deanery, their division of work, and
the hours of their meals. Presently, a very
beautiful, haughty-looking young lady made her
appearance in the Close, and in the dean's pew. She
was said to be his niece, the orphan daughter of
his brother, General Beauchamp, come to East
Chester to reside for the necessary time before
her marriage, which was to be performed in the
cathedral by her uncle, the new dignitary. But
as callers at the deanery did not see this beautiful
bride-elect, and as the Beauchamps had not as
yet fallen into habits of intimacy with any of
their new acquaintances, very little was known of
the circumstances of this approaching wedding
beyond the particulars given above.

Ellinor and Miss Monro sat at their drawing-room
window, a little shaded by the muslin
curtains, watching the busy preparations for the
marriage, which was to take place the next day.
All morning long hampers of fruit and flowers,
boxes from the railway—for by this time East
Chester had got a railway—shop-messengers,
hired assistants, kept passing backwards and
forwards in the busy Close. Towards afternoon
the bustle subsided, the scaffolding was up, the
materials for the next day's feast carried out of
sight. It was to be concluded that the bride-elect
was seeing to the packing of her trousseau,
helped by the merry multitude of cousins, and that
the servants were arranging the dinner for the
day, or the breakfast for the morrow. So Miss
Monro had settled it, discussing every detail and
every probability as though she were a chief
actor, instead of only a distant, uncared-for
spectator of the coming event. Ellinor was tired,
and now that there was nothing interesting going
on, she had fallen back to her sewing, when she
was startled by Miss Monro's exclamation:

"Look, look! here are two gentlemen coming
along the lime-tree walk! it must be the
bridegroom and his friend." Out of much sympathy,
and some curiosity, Ellinor bent forward, and
saw just emerging from the shadow of the trees
on to the full afternoon sunlit pavement, Mr.
Corbet and another gentleman; the former
changed, worn, aged, though with still the same
fine intellectual face, leaning on the arm of the
younger taller man, and talking eagerly. The
other gentleman was doubtless the bridegroom,
Ellinor said to herself; and yet her prophetic
heart did not believe her words. Even before
the bright beauty at the deanery looked out of
the great oriel-window of the drawing-room, and