“One moment, Ellin,” cried Mr. St. George, preventing her: “will you forgive me?”
“Forgive and forget, too,” smiled Ellin, her brow smoothing itself. “But you must never recur to the subject again.”
So Mr. St. George went home, his accounts settled—as Tod would have said: and the days glided on.
“What is it that ails Ellin?”
It was a piping-hot morning in July, in one of the good old hot summers that we seem never to get now; and Aunt Hester sat in her parlour, its glass-doors open, adding up the last week’s bills of the butcher and the baker, when she was interrupted by this question from her brother. He had come stalking upon her, rattling as usual, though quite unconsciously, the silver in his trousers pockets. The trousers were of nankeen: elderly gentlemen wore them in those days for coolness.
“What ails her!” repeated Aunt Hester, dropping the bills in alarm. “Why do you ask me, John?”
“Now, don’t you think you should have been a Quaker?” retorted Mr. Delorane. “I put a simple question to you, and you reply to it by asking me another. Please to answer mine first. What is it that is the matter with Ellin?”
Aunt Hester sighed. Of too timid a nature to put forth her own opinion upon any subject gratuitously in her brother’s house, she hardly liked to give it even when asked for. For the past few weeks Ellin had been almost palpably fading; was silent and dispirited, losing her bright colour, growing thinner; might be heard catching her breath in one of those sobbing sighs that betoken all too surely some secret, ever-present sorrow. Aunt Hester had observed this; she now supposed it had at length penetrated to the observation of her brother.
“Can’t you speak?” he demanded.
“I don’t know what to say, John. Ellin does not seem well, and looks languid: of course this broiling weather is against us all. But——”