"Right? Dear my lady!" (whenever Ellis was strongly moved, she always so addressed her mistress;) "I would stake your confidence in me, which is all my life's worth, if Master Edward is not at the bottom of it all, and that this poor child is sacrificing herself for some fancied danger to him! I saw enough of that work when they were young children, and I have noticed enough since she has been under my care."
"Edward!" repeated Mrs. Hamilton, so bewildered, as to stop for the moment chafing Ellen's cold hand; "Edward! bearing the high character he does; what can he have to do with it?"
"I don't know, my lady, but I am sure he has. Young men, ay, some of the finest and bravest among us, get into difficulties sometimes, and it don't touch their characters as their officers see them, and Master Edward was always so terrified at the mere thought of my master knowing any of his faults; but—hush! we must not let her know we suspect any thing, poor lamb; it will make her still more miserable. You are better now, dear Miss Ellen, are you not?" she added, soothingly, as Ellen feebly raised her hand to her forehead, and then slowly unclosed her eyes, and beheld her aunt leaning over her, with that same expression of anxious affection, which her illness had so often caused in her childhood. Sense, or rather memory, had not quite returned, and her first words were, with a faint but happy smile—
"I am better, dear aunt, much better; I dare say I shall soon be well." But it was only a momentary forgetfulness; swift as thought came the whole of what had so lately passed—her uncle's letter, her aunt's words, and murmuring, in a tone how painfully changed! "I forgot—forgive me," she buried her face in the pillow.
"Ellen, my dear Ellen! why will you persist in making yourself and me so miserable, when a few words would make us happier?" exclaimed Mrs. Hamilton, almost imploringly, as she bent over her.
"Do not urge her now, dear my lady, she is not well enough; give her till Master Edward comes; I am sure she will not resist him," answered Ellis, very respectfully, though meaningly, as her look drew her mistress's attention to the shudder which convulsed Ellen's slight frame, at the mention of her brother.
Pained and bewildered more than ever, Mrs. Hamilton, after waiting till the faintness seemed quite gone, and thinking that if the restraint of her presence were removed, Ellen might be relieved by tears, left her, desiring Ellis to let her know in a short time how she was. The moment the door closed, Ellen threw her arms round Ellis's neck, exclaiming passionately—
"Take me away—take me away, dear Ellis; I can not bear this room—it seems all full of misery! and I loved it so once, and I shall love it again, when I am miles and miles away, and can not see it—nor any one belonging to it. Oh, Ellis, Ellis! I knew you were too kind. I was too glad and contented to be with you; it was not punishment enough for my sin—and I must go away—and I shall never, never see my aunt again—I know I shall not. Oh! if I might but die first! but I am too wicked for that; it is only the good that die."
And almost for the first time since her sin had been discovered, she gave way to a long and violent fit of weeping, which, though terrible while it lasted, as the anguish of the young always is, greatly relieved her, and enabled her after that day not to revert in words (the thought never left her till a still more fearful anxiety deadened it) to her uncle's sentence again.
Mrs. Hamilton sat for a very long time alone after she had left Ellen. Ellis's words returned to her again and again so pertinaciously, that she could not break from them. Edward! the cause of it all—could it be possible?—could it be, that he had plunged himself into difficulties, and afraid to appeal to his uncle or her, had so worked on Ellen as not only to make her send relief, but actually so to keep his secret, as to endure every thing rather than betray it? Circumstance after circumstance, thought after thought, so congregated upon her, so seemed to burst into being, and flash light one from the other, that her mind ached beneath their pressure. Ellen's unhappiness the day his last letter had been received, her sudden illness—had it taken place before or after Robert had lost the money? She could not satisfy herself, for her husband's sudden summons to Feroe, hasty preparations, and departure, had rendered all the month confused and unsatisfactory in its recollections. So intense was the relief of the idea, that Mrs. Hamilton feared to encourage it, lest it should prove a mere fancy, and urge softer feelings toward her niece than ought to be. Even the supposition made her heart yearn toward her with such a feeling of love, almost of veneration, for the determined self-devotion, so essentially woman's characteristic, that she resolutely checked its ascendency. All her previous fancies, that Ellen was no ordinary child, that early suffering and neglect had, while they produced some childish faults, matured and deepened the capabilities of endurance and control, from the consciousness (or rather existence, for it was not the consciousness to the child herself) of strong feeling, returned to her, as if determined to confirm Ellis's supposition. The disappearance of her allowance; her assertion, that she was seeking Mrs. Langford's cottage, by that shorter but forbidden path, to try and get her to dispose of her trinkets, when the wind blew the notes to her hand—all now seemed connected one with the other, and confirmed. She could well understand, how in a moment of almost madness they might have been used without thought, and the after-effect upon so delicate a mind and conscience. Then, in contradiction to all this (a mere hypothesis raised on nothing firmer than Ellis's supposition), came the constantly favorable accounts of Edward; his captain's pride and confidence in him; the seeming impossibility that he could get into such difficulties, and what were they? The name of Harding rushed on her mind, she knew not why or how—but it made her tremble, by its probable explanation of the whole. A coarse or even less refined mind, would have either appealed at once to Ellen, as to the truth of this suspicion, or thought herself justified in looking over all Edward's letters to his sister, as thus to discover the truth; but in Mrs. Hamilton's pure mind the idea never even entered, though all her niece's papers and letters were in her actual possession. She could only feel to her heart's core with Ellis, "Thank God, Master Edward's coming home!" and pray earnestly that he might be with them, as they hoped and anticipated, in a few, a very few days.