This time, however, it came not, and Elizabeth disappeared below stairs immediately.

The girl was revolving in her own mind a difficult ethical question.  To-day, for the first time in her life, she had not “told Miss Hilary every thing.”  Two things had happened, and she could not make up her mind as to whether she ought to communicate them.

Now Elizabeth had a conscience, by nature a very tender one, and which, from circumstances, had been cultivated into a much higher sensitiveness than, alas! is common among her class, or, indeed, in any class.  This, if an error, was Miss Hilary’s doing; it probably caused Elizabeth a few more miseries, and vexations, and painful shocks in the world than she would have had had she imbibed only the ordinary tone of morality, especially the morality of ordinary domestic servants; but it was an error upon which, in summing up her life, the Recording Angel would gravely smile.

The first trial had happened at breakfast time.  Ascott, descending earlier than his wont, had asked her.  Did any gentleman, short and dirty, with a hooked nose, inquire for him yesterday?

Elizabeth thought a minute, and recollected that some person answering the above not too flattering description had called, but refused to leave his name, saying he did not know the ladies, but was a particular friend of Mr. Leaf’s.

Ascott laughed.  “So he is—­a very particular friend; but my aunts would not fancy him, and I don’t want him to come here.  Say, if he calls, that I’m gone out of town.”

“Very well, sir.  Shall you start before dinner?” said Elizabeth, whose practical mind immediately recurred to that meal, and to the joint, always contrived to be hot on the days that Ascott dined at home.

He seemed excessively tickled.  “Bless you, you are the greatest innocent!  Just say what I tell you, and never mind—­hush! here’s Aunt Hilary.”

And Miss Hilary’s anxious face, white with long wakefulness, had put out of Elizabeth’s head the answer that was coming; indeed the matter slipped from her mind altogether, in consequence of another circumstance which gave her much more perplexity.

During her young mistress’s absence, supposing Miss Selina out too, and Miss Leaf up stairs, she had come suddenly into the parlor without knocking.  There, to her amazement, she saw Miss Selina and Mr. Ascott standing, in close conversation, over the fire.  They were so engrossed that they did not notice her, and she shut door again immediately.  But what confounded her was, that she was certain, absolutely certain, Mr. Ascott had his arm round Miss Selina’s waist!

Now that was no business of hers, and yet the faithful domestic was a good deal troubled; still more so, when, by Miss Leaf’s excessive surprise at hearing of the visitor who had come and gone, carrying Miss Selina away to the city, she was certain the elder sister was completely in the dark as to any thing going to happen in the family.