hasty, too passionate: he would frighten me." "And how do you know Mordaunt is not passionate?" "Still Mordaunt!" said Ellen, a little impatiently: "what signifies to me whether he is passionate or not? He will never be more to me than an agreeable acquaintance,"--"Well, I think Mordaunt has at times an odd look with his eyes, and a gloom on his countenance that is frightful." "Frightful! Mordaunt's countenance frightful! I never saw any thing so handsome; and the expression is the softest--his smile the sweetest--" Ellen paused with some embarrassment, and Joanna answered a little spitefully, "That may be, when he looks at _you_; and then you blush, and cast down your eyes, and of course do not see how _he_ looks; but I tell you that he _has_ a gloom that is _frightful_, though you are so astonished at the word, and so delighted with him." Here the shrill voice of Mrs. Ross calling to them from her own room, "Girls, girls, do you mean to talk all night," put an end to the conference, and they hastily said "Good night," less pleased with each other than they had ever been before. Joanna was angry with Ellen for preferring Mordaunt to Charles, and Ellen thought Joanna extremely captious, and out of humour. The next day, Mordaunt, accompanied by Mr. Ross, looked at the lodgings he had proposed for him, and agreed immediately to take them for three months, to commence at the expiration of three weeks from the present time, during which, he said, he must take a journey to Bath, where he should see Lord St. Aubyn, and obtain his consent to an arrangement which would admit of his leaving Northamptonshire for that time; and that during his absence from Llanwyllan he should send some books and other additional comforts to his new lodgings: he should set out, he said, the next day but one, for he was impatient to begin his journey, that he might return the sooner. On the intermediate day, he walked to the Farm, and, strange to tell, found Ellen without Joanna.