'How strange that you should ask me this,' replied Mary, 'for I am rather ashamed to say that I feel as if something of evil were about to happen—but the emotion is vague and undefined.'
'Then you believe in presentiments?'
'I do—sometimes—do not you, Dr. Wodrow?'
'I am afraid I do,' said he, with increasing kindness and gravity of manner. 'So Robert and Ellinor have completely quarrelled?'
'I fear so.'
'George Eliot says that "Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a moral philosopher is the slave of some woman or other." But I came not to speak of Robert, poor fellow, but of something concerning yourself.'
'Of me!' said Mary, startled by the growing gravity of his manner.
'Yourself and Ellinor! I have wanted much to see you all day, my dear.'
'Why?'
'I have news for you.'