第68章

"Be patient, gentle Nell, forget this grief."

Henry VI.

{William Shakespeare, "2 Henry VI", II.iv.26}

THE Wyllyses remained later than they had intended in the country. Elinor, indeed, proposed to her aunt that they should pass the winter at Wyllys-Roof, but Miss Agnes and her grandfather were unwilling to do so. The variety of a life in town would be preferable for her sake to the quiet monotony of a country winter. They knew she had too much sense to wish to play the victim; but it was only natural to believe, that in a solitary country life, painful recollections would force themselves upon her oftener than among her friends in town, where she would he obliged to think less of herself, and more of others.

It had been a great relief to her to find, that Jane had not acted as unworthily as Miss Agnes had at first feared; in spite of what she herself had overheard at Miss Hubbard's party, Elinor threw off all suspicion of her cousin, as soon as she learned that Jane denied any previous knowledge of the change in Harry's feelings. Hazlehurst, himself, had said in his letter that she was blameless.

"Then," she exclaimed, "I shall at least be able to love Jane as before!" She immediately sat down, and wrote her cousin a short, but affectionate letter, containing only a slight allusion to what had passed. Jane's answer, of course, avoided wounding her feelings, and their intercourse was resumed.

"The time will come, I trust," she thought, "when Harry, too, will be a friend again." But she felt the hour had not yet arrived. She could not so soon forget the past. It was no easy task, suddenly to change the whole current of feeling which had filled her mind during the last two years. In spite of her earnest resolutions, during the first few weeks, thoughts and feelings of the past would recur too often. For some time Elinor was very unhappy; she felt that the strongest and deepest affections of her heart had been neglected, rejected, undervalued, by one whose opinion she had learned to prize too highly. She wept and blushed to think how much she had become attached to Harry, since she had looked upon him as her affianced husband. She could not but feel herself free from all reproach towards him; it was he who, unsought by her, had wished to draw a closer tie between them. He had succeeded but too well, and then he had forgotten her. The temptation which had proved too strong for him, would not have deserved the name, had the case been reversed, had she been exposed to it. And yet she did not reproach him; men think so much of beauty, and she was so very plain! It was but natural at such a moment, that she should be oppressed by an over-wrought humility. She accused herself of vanity, for having at one time believed it possible Harry could love one like herself. But how happy was Jane!

Her efforts to struggle against low spirits were the greater, for the sake of her aunt and her grandfather. She made it a duty to neglect no regular task, and much of her time was occupied as usual; but the feelings which she carried about to her employment, were very different from what they had been heretofore. It was her first taste of sorrow; well might her aunt deeply reproach Hazlehurst for his versatile conduct towards her beloved child. Elinor flattered herself that Miss Agnes knew not half of what she felt. In general she succeeded in being quite calm, and attentive to others; she was always sweet-tempered, and unrepining. But she could not read, herself, the expression of her own countenance, so tenderly watched by her aunt. She was not aware that the musical tones of her voice were no longer cheerful; that instead of the gay, easy conversation in which she used to bear her part, she was now at times absent, often silent; she whose graceful wit and youthful spirits had been until lately the joy of her family. Mr. Wyllys's indignation against Hazlehurst would have been boundless, if he could have seen him at such moments, as was often now the case, sitting by the side of Jane, admiring the length of her eye-lashes, the pearly smoothness of her complexion, and the bright colour of her lips, as she uttered some very common-place remark. Such had now become Hazlehurst's daily pleasure, his daily habit.

["versatile" = inconstant, fickle}

Miss Agnes purposely left to her niece, this year, all the arrangements for their removal to town; and Elinor was obliged to be very busy. It happened too, quite opportunely, perhaps, that just at that time Mrs. George Wyllys was coming over oftener than usual, to consult her father-in-law and Miss Agnes. Against Mr. Wyllys's advice, she had to withdraw her eldest boy from the school where he had been first placed, and now a new choice was to be made. Mr. Wyllys recommended a small establishment in their own neighbourhood, recently opened by Miss Patsey's brother; he thought it equally good with the one she had in view, and with the additional advantage of more moderate terms, and a smaller number of boys. But Mrs. Wyllys had a great deal to say on the opposite side of the question; the low price was an objection in her eyes.

"There, my dear sir, you must allow me to differ from you. I have always intended to devote a large portion of my means to the education of my children; economy in such a case, I cannot look upon as economy at all."

"Certainly, Harriet, you are perfectly right to secure to your children every advantage in your power. But this is not a case in point. Thomas Hubbard, you know, was a principal in the very school which you have in view, and only withdrew last spring on account of ill health. He still continues the same system, and has the same masters, with the advantage of only four boys besides Evert, to occupy his attention."

This was too plain to be contradicted. "But in my opinion, sir, a large school is very much to be preferred for a boy. I have thought a great deal on the subject, since Evert has been of an age to leave me."

"But what are your reasons for preferring a large school to a small one?"