"'Tis awful, isn't it?" said Phil, with a laugh that seemed to ring all down the combe, and came back in echoes from the opposite slope, where in the distance the cab from the station was seen hastening back towards the railway in a cloud of dust. The laugh was like a trumpet of triumph flung across the distance at the discomfited enemy thus going off drooping in the hurry of defeat. He added, "But you may imagine, even if I had known anything, he wouldn't have got much out of me. I didn't know anything, however, I'm very glad to say."
"That is always the best," said Mrs. Dennistoun, with a certain grave didactic tone. "And here is Elinor, as I thought. When one cannot find her anywhere else she's sure to be found here."
CHAPTER XII.
"Well," said Compton, placing himself beside her, "here you are, Nell; kind of the old lady to bring me, wasn't it? I should never have found you out by myself."
"Has he gone, Phil?" Elinor raised her scared face from her hands, and gave him a piteous look.
"Why, Nell! you are trembling like a leaf. Was it frightened, my pretty pet, for Stanny? Stanny's gone off with his tail between his legs. Not a bit of starch left in him. As limp a lawyer as ever you saw."
"Was he a lawyer?" she said, not knowing why she said it, for it mattered nothing at all to Elinor what the man was.
"Not exactly; and yet, I suppose, something of the kind. He is the one that knows about law points, and such things. But now he's as quiet as a lamb, thanks to you."
"Phil," she cried, "what did you make me say? I don't know what I have done. I have done something dreadful—deceived the man, as good as told him a lie."