'Ah heaven!' she cried, turning pale with dismay, 'are you then fixed, Mr Harleigh, to rob me of peace for life?'
'Be not,' cried he, rapidly, 'alarmed! I will not cost you a moment's danger, and hardly a moment's uneasiness. A few words will remove every fear; but I must speak them myself. Elinor is at this instant out of all but wilful danger; wilful danger, however, being all that she had had to encounter, it must be guarded against as sedulously as if it were inevitable. To this end, I must leave Brighthelmstone immediately—'
'No, Sir,' interrupted Ellis; 'it is I who must leave Brighthelmstone; your going would be the height of inhumanity.'
'Pardon me, but it is to clear this mistake that, once more, I force myself into your sight. I divined your design when I saw an empty post-chaise drive up to your door; which else, at a time such as this, I should unobtrusively have passed.'
'Quick! quick!' cried Ellis, 'every moment affrights me!'
'I am gone. I cannot oppose, for I partake your fears. Elinor has demanded to see us together to-morrow morning.'
'Terrible!' cried Ellis, trembling; 'what may be her design? And what is there not to dread! Indeed I dare not encounter her!'
'There can be, unhappily, but one opinion of her purpose,' he answered: 'She is wretched, and from impatience of life, wishes to seek death. Nevertheless, the cause of her disgust to existence not being any intolerable calamity, though the most probing, perhaps, of disappointments, life, with all its evils, still clings to her; and she as little knows how to get rid of, as how to support it.'
'You cannot, Sir, mean to doubt her sincerity?'
'Far from it. Her mind is as noble as her humour and taste are flighty; yet, where she has some great end in view, she studies, in common with all those with whom the love of frame is the ruling passion, Effect, public Effect, rather than what she either thinks to be right, or feels to be desirable.'