The next time that John’s presence was required at the cottage was for the signing of the very simple settlements; which, as there was nothing or next to nothing in the power of the man to settle upon his wife, were easy enough. He met Mr. Lynch, who was Mrs. Dennistoun’s “man of business,” and a sharp London solicitor, who was for the husband. Elinor’s fortune was five thousand pounds, no more, not counting her expectations from him, which were left out of the question. It was a very small matter altogether, and one which the smart solicitor who was in Mr. Compton’s interest spoke of with a certain contempt, as who should say he was not in the habit of being disturbed and brought to the country for any such trifle. It was now August—not a time when any man was supposed to be available for matters like these. Mr. Lynch was just about starting for his annual holiday, but came, at no small personal inconvenience, to do his duty by the poor girl whom he had known all his life. John and he travelled to the cottage together, and their aspect was not cheerful. “Did you ever hear,” said Mr. Lynch, “such a piece of folly as this—a man with no character at all? This is what it is to leave a girl in the sole care of her mother. What does a woman know about such things?{vol. i_68}”

“I don’t think it was her mother’s fault,” said John, anxious to do justice all round. “Elinor is very head-strong, and when she has made up her mind to a thing——”

“A bit of a girl!” said Mr. Lynch, contemptuously. He was an old bachelor and knew nothing about the subject, as the reader will perceive. “Her mother ought never to have permitted it for a moment. She should have put down her foot: and then Miss Elinor would soon have come to reason. What I wonder is the ruffian’s own motives? for it can’t be a little bit of money like that. Five thousand’s a mere mouthful to such a man as he is. He’ll get rid of it all in a week.”

“It must be tied up as tight as possible,” said John.

Here Mr. Lynch faltered a little. “She has got an idea into her head, with the intention, I don’t doubt, of defrauding herself if she can. He has got some investment for it, it appears. He is on the board of some company—a pretty board to take in such a fellow? But the Honourable is always something, I suppose.”

John did not say the dis-Honourable, though it trembled on the edge of his tongue. “But you will not permit that?” he said.

“No, no; we will not permit it,” said Mr. Lynch, with an emphasis on the negative which sounded like failing resolution.

“That would be giving the lamb to the wolf with a vengeance.{vol. i_69}”

“Exactly what I said; exactly what I said. I am very glad, Mr. Tatham, that you take the same view.”

“There is but one view to be taken,” said John. “He must not have the slightest power over her money. It must be tied up as tight as the law can do it; not that I think it of the least consequence,” he added. “Of course, he will get it all from her one way or another. Law’s but a poor barrier against a determined man.”

“I’m glad you see that too,” said Mr. Lynch, “and you might say a determined woman: for she has set her mind on this, and we’ll have a nice business with her, I can see.”

“A bit of a girl!” said John, with a laugh, echoing the previous sentiment.

“That’s very true,” said the old lawyer; “and still I think her mother—but I don’t put any great confidence in my own power to resist Elinor. Poor little thing, I’ve known her since she was that high; indeed, I may say I knew her before she was born. And you are a relation, Mr. Tatham?”

“Third or fourth cousin.”

“But still, more intimate than a person unconnected with them, and able to speak your mind more freely. I wonder now that you never said anything. But in family matters sometimes one is very reluctant to interfere.”

“I said everything I could say, not to offend them mortally; but I could only tell them the common talk{vol. i_70} of society. I told my aunt he was a scamp but after the first shock I am not sure that she thought that was any such bad thing. It depended upon the sense you put upon the word, she said.”

“Oh, women, women!” said Mr. Lynch. “That’s their way—a reformed rake makes the best husband. It’s an old-fashioned sentiment, but it’s in the background of their minds, a sort of tradition that they can’t shake off—or else the poor fellow has had so many disadvantages, and they think they can make it all right. It’s partly ignorance and partly vanity. But they are all the same, and their ways in the matter of marriage are not to be made out.”

“You have a great deal of experience.”

“Experience—oh, don’t speak of it!” said the old gentleman. “A man has a certain idea of the value of money, however great a fool he may be, but the women——”

“And yet they are said to stick to money, and to be respectful of it beyond anything but a miser. I have myself remarked——”

“In small matters,” said Mr. Lynch, “in detail—sixpences to railway porters and that sort of thing—so people say at least. But a sum of money on paper has no effect on a woman, she will sign it away with a wave of her hand. It doesn’t touch their imagination. Five pounds in her pocket is far more than five thousand on paper, to Elinor, for instance. I wish,” cried the old gentleman, with a little spitefulness, “that this Mar{vol. i_71}ried Women’s Property Bill would push on and get itself made law. It would save us a great deal of trouble, and perhaps convince the world at the last how little able they are to be trusted with property. A nice mess they will make of it, and plenty of employment for young solicitors,” he said, rubbing his hands.

For this was before that important bill was passed, which has not had (like so many other bills) the disastrous consequences which Mr. Lynch foresaw.

They were met at the station by the pony carriage, and at the door by Elinor herself, who came flying out to meet them. She seized Mr. Lynch by both arms, for he was a little old man, and she was bigger than he was.

“Now you will remember what I said,” she cried in his ear, yet not so low but that John heard it too.

“You are a little witch; you mustn’t insist upon anything so foolish. Leave all that to me, my dear,” said Mr. Lynch. “What do you know about business? You must leave it to me and the other gentleman, who I suppose is here, or coming.”

“He is here, but I don’t care for him. I care only for you. There are such advantages; and I do know a great deal about business; and,” she said, with her mouth close to the old lawyer’s ear, “it will please Phil so much if I show my confidence in him, and in the things with which he has to do.”

“It will not please him so much if the thing bursts, and you are left without a penny, my dear.{vol. i_72}”

Elinor laughed. “I don’t suppose he will mind a bit: he cares nothing for money. But I do,” she said. “You know you always say women love acquisition. I want good interest, and of course with Phil on it, it must be safe for me.”

“Oh, that makes it like the Bank of England, you think! but I don’t share your confidence, my pretty Elinor. I’m an old fellow. No Phil in the world has any charm for me. You must trust me to do what I feel is best for you. And Mr. Tatham here is quite of my opinion.”

“Oh, John! he is sure to be against me,” said Elinor, with an angry glimmer in her eyes. She had not as yet taken any notice of him while she welcomed with such warmth his old companion. And John had stood by offering no greeting, with his bag in his hand. But when she said this the quick-feeling girl was seized with compunction. She turned from Mr. Lynch and held out both her hands to her cousin. “John, I didn’t mean that; it is only that I am excited and cross. And don’t, oh, don’t go against me,” she cried.

“I never did, and never will, Elinor,” he said gravely. Then he asked, after a moment, “Is Mr. Compton here?”

“No; how could he be here? Three gentlemen in the cottage is enough to overwhelm us already. Mr. Sharp, fortunately, can’t stay,” she added, lowering her voice; “he has to be driven back to the station to catch the last express. And it is August,” she said{vol. i_73} with a laugh; “you forget the 15th. Now, could Phil be anywhere but where there is grouse? You shall have some to dinner to-night that fell by his gun. That should mollify you, for I am sure you never got grouse at the cottage before in August. Mamma would as soon think of buying manna for you to eat.”

“I think it would have been more respectful, Elinor, if he had been here. What is grouse to you?”

“Then I don’t think anything of the kind,” cried Elinor. “He is much better away. And I assure you, John, I never mean to put myself in competition with the grouse.”

The old lawyer had gone into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Dennistoun was holding parley with Mr. Sharp. Elinor and John were standing alone in the half light of the summer evening, the sun down, the depths of the combe below falling into faint mist, but the sunset-tinted clouds still floating like a vapor made of roses upon the clearness of the blue above. “Come and take a turn through the copse,” said John. “They don’t want either of us indoors.”

She went with a momentary reluctance and a glance back at the bow-window of the drawing-room, from which the sound of voices issued. “Don’t you think I should be there to keep them up to the mark?” she said, half laughing. And then, “Well, yes—as you are going to Switzerland too. I think you might have stayed and seen me married after all, and made acquaintance with Phil.{vol. i_74}”

“I thought I should have met him here to-day, Elinor.”

“Now, how could you? You know the accommodation of the cottage just as well as I do. We have two spare rooms, and no more.”

“You could have sent me out somewhere to sleep. That has been done before now.”

“Oh, John, how persistent you are, and worrying! When I tell you that Phil is shooting, as everybody of his kind is—do you think I want him to give up all the habits of his life? He is not like us: we adapt ourselves: but these people parcel out their time as if they were in a trade, don’t you know? So long in London, so long abroad, and in the Highlands for the grouse, and somewhere else for the partridges, or they would die.”

“I think he might have departed from that routine once in a way, Elinor, for you.”

“I tell you again, John, I shall never put myself in competition”—Elinor stopped abruptly, with perhaps, he thought, a little glimmer of indignation in her eyes. “I hate women who do that sort of thing,” she cried. “‘Give up your cigar—or me,’ as I’ve heard girls say. Such an unworthy thing! When one accepts a man one accepts him as he stands, with all his habits. What should I think of him if he said, ‘Give up your tea—or me!’ I should laugh in his face and throw him overboard without a pause.”

“You would never look at tea again as long as you{vol. i_75} lived if he did not like it; I suppose that is what you mean, Elinor?”

“Perhaps if I found that out, afterwards; but to be given the choice beforehand, never! After all, you don’t half know me, John.”

“Perhaps not,” he said, gravely. They had left the garden behind in its blaze of flowers, and strayed off into the subdued twilight of the copse, where everything was in a half tone of greenness and shadow and waning light. “There are always new lights arising on a many-sided creature like you—and that makes one think. Do you know you are not at all the person to take a great disappointment quietly, if that should happen to come to you in your life?”

“A great disappointment?” she said, looking up at him with a wondering glance. Then he thought the color paled a little in her face. “No,” she said, “I don’t suppose I should take it quietly. Who does?”

“Oh, many people—people with less determination and more patience than you. You are not very patient by nature, Elinor.”

“I never said I was.”

“And though no one would give up more generously, as a voluntary matter, you could not bear being made a nonentity of, or put in a secondary place.”

“I should not like it, I suppose.”

“You would give everything, flinging it away; but to have all your sacrifices taken for granted, your tastes made of no account{vol. i_76}——”

There was no doubt now that she had grown pale. “May I ask what all these investigations into my character mean? I never was so anatomized before.”

“It was only to say that you are not a good subject for this kind of experiment, Elinor. I don’t see you putting up with things, making the best of everything, submitting to have your sense of right and wrong outraged perhaps. Some women would not be much disturbed by that. They would put off the responsibility and feel it their duty to accept whatever was put before them. But you—it would be a different matter with you.”

“I should hope so, if I was ever exposed to such dangers. But now may I know what you are driving at, John, for you have some meaning in what you say!”

He took her hand and drew it through his arm. He was more moved than he wished to show. “Only this, Elinor”—he said.

“Oh, John, will you never call me Nelly any more?”

“Only this, Nelly, my little Nelly, never mine again—and that never was mine, except in my silly thought. Only this: that if you have the least doubt, the smallest flutter of an uncertainty, just enough to make you hold your breath for a moment, oh, my dear girl, stop! Don’t go on with it; pause until you can make sure.”

“John!” she forced her arm from his with an indignant movement. “Oh, how do you dare to say it?{vol. i_77}” she said. “Doubt of Mr. Compton! Uncertainty about Phil!” She laughed out, and the echo seemed to ring into all the recesses of the trees. “I would be much more ready to doubt myself,” she said.

“Doubt yourself; that is what I mean. Think if you are not deceiving yourself. I don’t think you are so very sure as you believe you are, Nelly. You don’t feel so certain——”

“Do you know that you are insulting me, John? You say as much as that I am a fool carried away by a momentary enthusiasm, with no real love, no true feeling in me, tempted, perhaps, as Mrs. Hudson thinks, by the Honourable!” Her lip quivered, and the fading colour came back in a rush to her face. “It is hard enough to have a woman like that think it, who ought to know better, who has always known me—but you, John!”

“You may be sure, Elinor, that I did not put it on that ground.”

“No, perhaps: but on ground not much more respectful to me—perhaps that I have been fascinated by a handsome man, which is not considered derogatory. Oh, John, a girl does not give herself away on an argument like that. I may be hasty and self-willed and impatient, as you say; but when you—love!” Her face flushed like a rose, so that even in the grey of the evening it shone out like one of the clouds full of sunset that still lingered on the sky. A few quick tears followed, the natural consequence of her emotion.{vol. i_78} And then she turned to him with the ineffable condescension of one farther advanced in life stooping sweetly to his ignorance. “You have not yet come to the moment in your experience when you can understand that, dear John.”

Oh, the insight and the ignorance, the knowledge and the absence of all perception! He, too, laughed out, as she had done, with a sense of the intolerable ridicule and folly and mistake. “Perhaps that’s how it is,” he said.

Elinor looked at him gravely, in an elder-sisterly, profoundly-investigating way, and then she took his arm quietly and turned towards home. “I shall forget what you have said, and you will forget that you ever said it; and now we will go home, John, and be just the same dear friends as before.”

“Will you promise me,” he said, “that whatever happens, without pride, or recollection of what I’ve been so foolish as to say, in any need or emergency, or whenever you want anything, or if you should be in trouble—trouble comes to everybody in this life—you will remember what you have said just now, and send for your cousin John?”

Her whole face beamed out in one smile, she clasped her other hand round his arm; “I should have done it without being asked, without ever doubting for a moment, because it was the most natural thing in the {vol. i_79}world. Whom should I turn to else if not to my dear old—— But call me Nelly, John.”

“Dear little Nelly!” he said with faltering voice, “then that is a bargain.”

She held up her cheek to him, and he kissed it solemnly in the shadow of the little young oak that fluttered its leaves wistfully in the breeze that was getting up—and then very soberly, saying little, they walked back to the cottage. He was going abroad for his vacation, not saying to himself even that he preferred not to be present at the wedding, but resigning himself to the necessity, for it was not to be till the middle of September, and it would be breaking up his holiday had he to come back at that time. So this little interview was a leave-taking as well as a solemn engagement for all the risks and dangers of life. The pain in it, after that very sharp moment in the copse, was softened down into a sadness not unsweet, as they came silently together from out of the shadow into the quiet hemisphere of sky and space, which was over the little centre of the cottage with its human glimmer of fire and lights. The sky was unusually clear, and among those soft, rose-tinted clouds of the sunset, which were no clouds at all, had risen a young crescent of a moon, just about to disappear, too, in the short course of one of her earliest nights. They lingered for a moment before they went indoors. The depth of the combe was filled with the growing darkness, but the ridges above were still light and softly edged with the silver of the moon, and the distant road, like a long, white line, came conspicuously into sight, winding for{vol. i_80} a little way along the hill-top unsheltered, before it plunged into the shadow of the trees—the road that led into the world, by which they should both depart presently to stray into such different ways.