Elizabeth looked up with those fond gray eyes of hers.  She was but a servant, and yet looks like these engraved themselves ineffaceably on her mistress’s heart, imparting the comfort that all pure love gives from any one human being to another.

And love has its wonderful rights and rewards.  Perhaps Elizabeth, who thought herself nothing at all to her mistress, would have marveled to know how much closer her mistress felt to this poor, honest, loving girl, whose truth she believed in, and on whose faithfulness she implicitly depended, than toward her own flesh and blood, who sat there moodily over the hearth; deeply pitied, sedulously cared for, but as for being confided in relied on, in great matters or small, his own concerns or theirs—­the thing was impossible.

They could not even ask him—­they dared not, in such a strange mood was he—­the simple question, Had he seen Mr. Ascott, and had Mr. Ascott been annoyed about the check?  It would not have been referred to at all had not Hilary, in holding his coat to dry, taken his pocket book out of the breast pocket, when he snatched at it angrily.

“What are you meddling with my things for?  Do you want to get at the check, and be peering at it to see if it’s all right?  But you can’t; I’ve paid it away.  Perhaps you’d like to know who to?  Then you shan’t.  I’ll not be accountable to you for all my proceedings.  I’ll not be treated like a baby.  You’d better mind what you are about, Aunt Hilary.”

Never, in all his childish naughtiness, or boyish impertinence, had Ascott spoken to her in such a tone.  She regarded him at first with simple astonishment, then hot indignation, which spurred her on to stand up for her dignity, and not submit to be insulted by her own nephew.  But then came back upon her her own doctrine, taught by her own experience, that character and conduct alone constitutes real dignity or authority.  She had, in point of fact, no authority over him; no one can have, not even parents, over a young man of his age, except that personal influence which is the strongest sway of all.

She said only, with a quietness that surprised herself—­“You mistake, Ascott; I have no wish to interfere with you whatever; you are your own master, and must take your own course.  I only expect from you the ordinary respect that a gentleman shows to a lady.  You must be very tired and ill, or you would not have forgotten that.”

“I didn’t; or, if I did, I beg your pardon,” said he, half subdued.  “When are you going to bed?”

“Directly.  Shall I light your candle also?”

“Oh no; not for the world; I couldn’t sleep a wink.  I’d go mad if I went to bed.  I think I’ll turn out and have a cigar.”

His whole manner was so strange that his Aunt Johanna, who had sat aloof, terribly grieved, but afraid to interfere, was moved to rise up and go over to him.

“Ascott, my dear, you are looking quite ill.  Be advised by your old auntie.  Go to bed at once, and forget every thing till morning.”