Winnington took no thought of to-morrow, but loved Ellen Warleigh, with no consideration of whether she was rich or poor. It is probable that Ellen had no more calculating disposition than Winnington; for it is certain her sentiments towards him were not regulated by the extent of his worldly wealth,--perhaps she did not even know what her sentiments towards him were--but she thought him delightful, and wandered over the solitary heaths with him, in search of specimens. They very often found none, in the course of their four hours’ ramble, and yet came home as contented as if they had discovered an Emperor of Morocco on every bush. Baulked in their natural history studies by the perverse absence of moth and butterfly, they began,--by way of having something to do--to take up the science of botany. The searches they made for heath of a particular kind! The joy that filled them when they came on a group of wild flowers, and gathered them into a little basket they carried with them, and took them back to the manor, and astonished Mr. Warleigh with the sound of their Latin names! What new dignity the commonest things took under that sonorous nomenclature! How respectable a nettle grew when called an urtica, and how suggestive of happiness and Gretna Green when a flower could be declared to be cryptogamic. “See what a curious root this piece of broom has,” said Winnington, one night, on his return from the Manor, and laid his specimen on the table. Arthur hardly looked up from his book, and made some short reply. “It took Ellen and me ten minutes, with all our force, to pull it up by the roots. We had no knife, or I should merely have cut off the stalk; but see, now that the light falls on it, what curious shining earth it grows in; with odd little stones twisted up between the fibres! Did you ever see anything like it?” Arthur had fixed his eyes on the shrub during this speech--He stretched forth his hand and touched the soil still clinging to the roots--he put a small portion to his lips--his face grew deadly pale. “Where did you get this?” he said. “Down near the waterfall--not a hundred yards from this.” “On whose land?--on the glebe?” said Arthur, speaking with parched mouth, and still gazing on the broom. “Does Warleigh know of this?” he went on, “or the clergyman? Winnington! no one must be to told, tell Ellen to be silent; but she is not aware perhaps. Does she suspect?” “What? what is there to suspect, my dear Arthur? Don’t you think you work too much,” he added, looking compassionately on the dilated eye and pale cheek of his companion. “You must give up your studies for a day or two. Come with us on an exploring expedition to the Outer fell to-morrow; Mr. Warleigh is going.”