A little book lies near a roll of music on the piano, with her gloves
and hat. He takes up this book and examines it, for no reason except that it appears to belong to her. A copy of Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge, with a mark at the description of the Lord George Gordon Riots, and pencil marks on the margin. He turns idly to the fly-leaf, and sees written, “Elizabeth Lennox, from her brother Robert.” O cruel evidence! “Circumstance, that unspiritual god and miscreator,” again shows Elinor as a liar. What can he do now but doubt her word? Elinor meanwhile is pacing her room in a tumult of agitation. Her first impulse is to abandon her engagement with Mrs. Wood at once, and go to her parents. But poverty among other hard impositions forbids us acting on the dictates of pride, be it ever so honorable. Elinor shrinks from staying, but also shrinks from giving her reasons for leaving to her parents or to Mrs. Wood. To give false ones, covering her real one, never for one moment occurs to her. She feels keenly the cruelty, the injustice of the false position in which Lizzie’s folly has placed her. Yet she is too generous at heart to betray Lizzie even to her mother. She knows that when Lizzie told her of this “bit of fun” it was in confidence, and troublesome as the trust has proved, she will keep it until she is released. But she feels how hard it is to know how to act rightly, unaided, uncounselled. One refuge, however, she has—one counsellor who never betrays his trust, and who does not require her cousin’s name or identity. O blessed privilege of a Catholic! The safe, sure refuge of the confessional is Elinor’s. What better human guide and comforter than her pastor can she seek? No fears of a betrayed trust is here. So to him she goes, and from him she receives the needed strength to bear her heavy trial—for
heavy trial it is on such a young heart, all the more so because she cannot suppose her silence has put a stop to this disgraceful affair. She has written to Lizzie explaining what has happened, and begging her to lift this weight from her, and at least free her from this blame. And Lizzie has indignantly replied that she will not interfere, and that she believes Elinor to be the betrayer of her name to Fred Schuyler, and moreover hints that it has been done to win him to herself.
This rouses Elinor to such a degree that she nearly forgets her counsel to “return good for evil.” Prayer and meditation, however, those best of medicines for disturbed souls, work their good effect for her, and she is able still to bear in silence, trusting that time will lift the stigma off her. So she shuns as best she can all intercourse with Mr. Schuyler.
And thus about three unhappy weeks pass. Mr. Schuyler gives up trying to enlist Elinor’s attention, and he leaves the last communication of E. L. unanswered. He receives no more of those interesting missives. Lizzie, thoroughly frightened, stops this amusement for herself.
But at last the Nemesis, circumstance, overtakes her—the circumstance of meeting Mr. Frederick Schuyler at a party. A very small circumstance apparently, but pregnant with much for three individuals. He sees her standing not far off from him, in all the blaze of gas-light and full dress. He has never seen Elinor at this advantage, but the perfect profile and the proud carriage of the head impress him at once. Yet those blonde locks and the light laughing eyes—these are neither like Elinor’s nor the picture. Lovely this face certainly is, but he remembers the darker one as pleasing him more.
The remarkable resemblance, however, has so startled him, that he actually trembles as he asks a friend who has been talking with her to tell him her name.
“Miss Lennox.”
“Do you know her first name?” he says, with forced composure.
“Oh! yes. Lizzie Lennox and I are old friends; let me introduce you.” And in the brief interval before he is presented, he only remembers that it is L. L. and not E. L., the lady of the photograph but not of the correspondence.