Wondering, agitated, Ellen dropped the letter, and opened Mrs. Cumberland's. An enclosure fell from it: a draft for a sum of money, which, as it appeared, Mrs. Cumberland was in the habit of receiving every half-year for her charge of Ellen. Mr. Adair wrote in still more explicit terms on the subject of the proposed marriage to Mrs. Cumberland--almost in angry terms. _She_, of all people, he said, ought to know that a marriage between his daughter and the late Major Bohun's son would be unsuitable, improper, and most distasteful to himself. He did not understand how Mrs. Cumberland could have laid such a proposal before him, or have permitted herself to entertain it for a moment: unless indeed she had never been made acquainted with certain facts of the past, connected with himself and Major Bohun and Major Bohun's wife, which Cumberland had known well. He concluded by saying, as he had said to Ellen, that he hoped shortly to be in England. Both letters had evidently been written in haste and in agitation: all minor matters being accounted as nothing, compared with the distinct and stern embargo laid upon the marriage. "So it has happened for the best," murmured Ellen to her breaking heart, as she folded the letters and put them away. She took the draft to Mr. North's parlour. He put on his spectacles, and mastered its meaning by the help of some questions to Ellen. "A hundred and fifty pounds!" exclaimed he. "But surely, my dear, Mrs. Cumberland did not receive three hundred a-year with you! It's a large sum--for so small a service. "She had two hundred, I think," said Ellen. "I did not know the exact sum until to-day: Mrs. Cumberland never talked to me about these matters. Papa allows me for my own purse fifty pounds every half-year. Mrs. Cumberland always gave me that." "Ah," said Mr. North. "That's a good deal, too." "Will you take the draft, sir; and let me have the fifty pounds at your convenience?" Mr. North looked up as one who does not understand. "The money is not for me, child." "But I am staying here," she said, deprecatingly. He shook his head as he put back the paper. "Give it to Richard, my dear. He will know what to do about it, and what's right to be done. And so your father is coming home! We shall be sorry to lose you, Ellen. I am getting to love you, child. It seems as if you had come in the place of my poor lost Bessy." But Ellen was not sorry. The arrival of Mr. Adair would at least remove her from her present position, where every hour, as it passed, could only bring fresh pain to her. CHAPTER XXVI. MRS. GASS AT HOME. It was a warm and sunny day in Dallory. Mrs. Gass threw open her window and sat behind the geraniums enjoying the sunshine, exchanging salutations and gossip with as many of her acquaintances as happened to pass her windows. "How d'ye do, doctor? Isn't this a lovely day?"