"Ah," said madam. "It is well to be careful. Captain Bohun is to marry Miss Dallory: the less any other young woman has to say to him, the better." To this speech--remarkable as coming from one who professed to be a gentlewoman--Ellen made no reply, saving a bow as she passed onwards, with erect head and self-possessed step, leaving madam to her devices. She seemed to be tormented on every side. There was no comfort, no solace anywhere. Ellen could have envied Bessy Rane in her grave. And the farce that had to be kept up before the world. That very evening, as fate had it, Captain Bohun took Miss Adair in to dinner and sat next her, through some well-intentioned blundering of Richard's. It had pleased madam to invite seven or eight people; it did not please Mr. North to come in to dinner as he had been expected to do. Richard had to be host, and to take in a stout lady in green velvet, who was to have fallen to his father. There was a moment's confusion; madam had gone on; Richard mixed up the wrong people together, and finally said aloud, "Arthur, will you take in Miss Adair?" And so they sat, side by side, and no one observed that they did not converse together, or that anything was wrong. It is curious how long two people may have lived estranged from each other in a household, and the rest suspect it not. Have you over noticed this?--or tried it? It is remarkable, but very true. After dinner came the drawing-room; and the evening was a more social one than had been known of late. Music, cards, conversation. Young Mr. Ticknell, a relative of the old bankers' at Whitborough, was there; he had one of the sweetest voices ever given to man, and delighted them with his unaffected singing. One song, that he chose after a few jesting words with Ellen, in allusion to her name, two of them at least had not bargained for. "Ellen Adair." Neither had heard it since that evening at Eastsea; so long past now, in the events that had followed, that it seemed to be removed from them by ages. They had to listen. They could not do otherwise. Ellen sat at the corner of the sofa in her black net dress with its one white flower, that Mr. North had given her, in the middle of the corsage, and nothing, as usual, in her smooth brown hair; _he_ was leaning against the wall, not far from her, his arms folded. And the verses went on to the last one. "But now thou art cold to me, Ellen Adair: But now thou art cold to me, Ellen my dear. Yet her I loved so well, Still in my heart shall dwell, Oh! I shall ne'er forget Ellen Adair."