father was anxious, as might be seen from the
extract, to ascertain whether Mr. Wilkins could
secure him from the contingency of having his
son's widow and possible children thrown upon
his hands, by giving Ellinor a dowry; and if so,
it was gently insinuated, what would be the
amount of the same.

When Mr. Wilkins received this letter it
startled him out of a happy day-dream. He
liked Ralph Corbet and the whole connexion
quite well enough to give his consent to an
engagement; and sometimes even he was glad to
think that Ellinor's future was assured, and that
she would have a protector and friends after he
was dead and gone. But he did not want them
to assume their responsibilities so soon. He had
not distinctly contemplated her marriage as an
event likely to happen before his death. He
could not understand how his own life would go
on without her: or indeed why she and Ralph
Corbet could not continue just as they were at
present. He came down to breakfast with the
letter in his hand. By Ellinor's blushes, as she
glanced at the handwriting, he knew that she
had heard from her lover by the same post; by
her tender caresses—caresses given as if to make
up for the pain which the prospect of her leaving
him was sure to give him—he was certain that
she was aware of the contents of the letter. Yet
he put it in his pocket, and tried to forget it.

He did this not merely from his reluctance to
complete any arrangements which might facilitate
Ellinor's marriage. There was a further annoyance
connected with the affair. His money
matters had been for some time in an involved
state; he had been living beyond his income,
even reckoning that, as he always did, at the
highest point at which it ever touched. He kept
no regular accounts, reasoning with himself—or,
perhaps, I should rather say persuading himself
—that there was no great occasion for regular
accounts, when he had a steady income coming
in from his profession, as well as the interest of
a good sum of money left him by his father; and
when his expenditure, living in his own house
near a country town where provisions were
cheap, for his small family—only one child—
could never amount to anything like his
incomings from the above-mentioned sources. But
servants and horses, and choice wines and rare
fruit-trees, and a habit of purchasing any book
or engraving he might take a fancy to,
irrespective of the price, run away with money, even
though there be but one child. A year or two
ago Mr. Wilkins had been startled into a system
of exaggerated retrenchment—retrenchment
which only lasted about six weeks— by the sudden
bursting of a bubble speculation, in which
he had invested a part of his father's savings.
But as soon as the change in his habits,
necessitated by his new economies, became irksome,
he had comforted himself for his relapse into his
former easy extravagance of living, by remembering
the fact that Ellinor was engaged to the son of
a man of large property; and that though Ralph
was only the second son, yet that his mother's
estate must come to him, as Mr. Ness had
already informed Ellinor's father, on first hearing
of her engagement.

Mr. Wilkins did not doubt that he could easily
make Ellinor a fitting allowance, or even pay
down a requisite dowry; but the doing so would
involve an examination into the real state of his
affairs, and this involved distasteful trouble. He
had no idea how much more than mere
temporary annoyance would arise out of the
investigation. Until it was made, he decided in his
own mind that he would not speak to Ellinor on
the subject of her lover's letter. So, for the
next few days, she was kept in suspense, seeing
little of her father; and during the short times
that she was with him, she was made aware that
he was nervously anxious to keep the conversation
engaged on general topics rather than on
the one which she had at heart. Mr. Corbet
had written to her by the same post as that on
which he sent the letter, of which I have already
spoken, to her father, telling her of its
contents, and begging her (in all those sweet words
which lovers know how to use) to urge her
father to compliance for his sake—his, her lover's
—who was pining and lonely in all the crowds
of London, since her loved presence was not
there. He did not care for money, save as for
a means of hastening their marriage: indeed, if
there were only some income fixed, however
small; some time for their marriage fixed,
however distant, he could be patient. He did not
want superfluity of wealth; his habits were
simple, as she well knew; and money enough
would be theirs in time, both from her share of
contingencies, and the certainty of his finally
possessing Bromley.

Ellinor delayed replying to this letter until her
father should have spoken to her on the subject.
But as she perceived that he avoided all such
conversation, the young girl's heart failed her.
She began to blame herself for wishing to leave
him, to reproach herself for being accessary to
any step which made him shun being alone with
her, and look distressed and full of care as he
did now. It was the usual struggle between
father and lover for the possession of love,
instead of the natural aud graceful resignation of
the parent to the prescribed course of things;
and, as usual, it was the poor girl who bore the
suffering for no fault of her own: although she
blamed herself for being the cause of the
disturbance in the previous order of affairs. Ellinor
had no one to speak to confidentially but her
father and her lover, and when they were at issue
she could talk openly to neither, so she brooded
over Mr. Corbet's unanswered letter, and her
father's silence, and became pale and dispirited.
Once or twice she looked up suddenly, and .
caught her father's eye gazing upon her with a
certain wistful anxiety; but the instant she saw
this he pulled himself up, as it were, and would
begin talking gaily about the small topics of the
day.