Then her father's temper had become very uncertain.He avoided being alone with her whenever he possibly could;and the consciousness of this,and of the terrible mutual secret which was the cause of this estrangement,were the reasons why Ellinor never recovered her pretty youthful bloom after her illness.Of course it was to this that the outside world attributed her changed appearance.They would shake their heads and say,"Ah,poor Miss Wilkins!What a lovely creature she was before that fever!"But youth is youth,and will assert itself in a certain elasticity of body and spirits;and at times Ellinor forgot that fearful night for several hours together.Even when her father's averted eye brought it all once more before her,she had learnt to form excuses and palliations,and to regard Mr.Dunster's death as only the consequence of an unfortunate accident.But she tried to put the miserable remembrance entirely out of her mind;to go on from day to day thinking only of the day,and how to arrange it so as to cause the least irritation to her father.She would so gladly have spoken to him on the one subject which overshadowed all their intercourse;she fancied that by speaking she might have been able to banish the phantom,or reduce its terror to what she believed to be the due proportion.But her father was evidently determined to show that he was never more to be spoken to on that subject;and all she could do was to follow his lead on the rare occasions that they fell into something like the old confidential intercourse.As yet,to her,he had never given way to anger;but before her he had often spoken in a manner which both pained and terrified her.Sometimes his eye in the midst of his passion caught on her face of affright and dismay,and then he would stop,and make such an effort to control himself as sometimes ended in tears.Ellinor did not understand that both these phases were owing to his increasing habit of drinking more than he ought to have done.She set them down as the direct effects of a sorely burdened conscience;and strove more and more to plan for his daily life at home,how it should go on with oiled wheels,neither a jerk nor a jar.It was no wonder she looked wistful,and careworn,and old.Miss Monro was her great comfort;the total unconsciousness on that lady's part of anything below the surface,and yet her full and delicate recognition of all the little daily cares and trials,made her sympathy most valuable to Ellinor,while there was no need to fear that it would ever give Miss Monro that power of seeing into the heart of things which it frequently confers upon imaginative people,who are deeply attached to some one in sorrow.
There was a strong bond between Ellinor and Dixon,although they scarcely ever exchanged a word save on the most common-place subjects;but their silence was based on different feelings from that which separated Ellinor from her father.Ellinor and Dixon could not speak freely,because their hearts were full of pity for the faulty man whom they both loved so well,and tried so hard to respect.
This was the state of the household to which Ralph Corbet came down at Easter.He might have been known in London as a brilliant diner-out by this time;but he could not afford to throw his life away in fireworks;he calculated his forces,and condensed their power as much as might be,only visiting where he was likely to meet men who could help in his future career.He had been invited to spend the Easter vacation at a certain country house which would be full of such human stepping-stones;and he declined in order to keep his word to Ellinor,and go to Ford Bank.But he could not help looking upon himself a little in the light of a martyr to duty;and perhaps this view of his own merits made him chafe under his future father-in-law's irritability of manner,which now showed itself even to him.
