Chapter IX

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"DEAR ELLINOR,--Words have passed between your father and me which have obliged me to leave his house, I fear, never to return to it. I will write more fully to-morrow. But do not grieve too much, for I am not, and never have been, good enough for you. God bless you, my dearest Nelly, though I call you so for the last time.--R. C."

"Papa, what is it?" Ellinor cried, clasping her hands together, as her father sat silent, vacantly gazing into the fire, after finishing the note.

"I don't know!" said he, looking up at her piteously; "it's the world, I think. Everything goes wrong with me and mine: it went wrong before THAT night--so it can't be that, can it, Ellinor?"

"Oh, papa!" said she, kneeling down by him, her face hidden on his breast.

He put one arm languidly round her. "I used to read of Orestes and the Furies at Eton when I was a boy, and I thought it was all a heathen fiction. Poor little motherless girl!" said he, laying his other hand on her head, with the caressing gesture he had been accustomed to use when she had been a little child. "Did you love him so very dearly, Nelly?" he whispered, his cheek against her: "for somehow of late he has not seemed to me good enough for thee. He has got an inkling that something has gone wrong, and he was very inquisitive--I may say he questioned me in a relentless kind of way."

"Oh, papa, it was my doing, I'm afraid. I said something long ago about possible disgrace."

He pushed her away; he stood up, and looked at her with the eyes dilated, half in fear, half in fierceness, of an animal at bay; he did not heed that his abrupt movement had almost thrown her prostrate on the ground.

"You, Ellinor! You--you--"

"Oh, darling father, listen!" said she, creeping to his knees, and clasping them with her hands. "I said it, as if it were a possible case, of some one else--last August--but he immediately applied it, and asked me if it was over me the disgrace, or shame--I forget the words we used--hung; and what could I say?"

"Anything--anything to put him off the scent. God help me, I am a lost man, betrayed by my child!"

Ellinor let go his knees, and covered her face. Every one stabbed at that poor heart. In a minute or so her father spoke again.

"I don't mean what I say. I often don't mean it now. Ellinor, you must forgive me, my child!" He stooped, and lifted her up, and sat down, taking her on his knee, and smoothing her hair off her hot forehead. "Remember, child, how very miserable I am, and have forgiveness for me. He had none, and yet he must have seen I had been drinking."