down the river, making ripples on the glassy opal surface of the water. They did not talk very much; Ellinor seemed disinclined for the exertion; and her lover was thinking over Mr. Wilkins’s behaviour, with some surprise and distaste of the habit so evidently growing upon him.
They came home, looking serious and tired: yet they could not account for their fatigue by the length of their walk; and Miss Monro, forgetting Autolycus’s song, kept fidgeting about Ellinor, and wondering how it was she looked so pale, if she had only been as far as the Ash Meadow. To escape from this wonder, Ellinor went early to bed. Mr. Wilkins was gone, no one knew where, and Ralph and Miss Monro were left to a half-hour’s tête-à-tête. He thought he could easily account for Ellinor’s languor, if, indeed, she had perceived as much as he had done of her father’s state, when they had come into the library after dinner. But there were many details which he was anxious to hear from a comparatively indifferent person, and as soon as he could, he passed on from the conversation about Ellinor’s health, to inquiries as to the whole affair of Mr. Dunster’s disappearance.
Next to her anxiety about Ellinor, Miss Monro liked to dilate on the mystery connected with Mr. Dunster’s flight; for that was the word she
