When Mordaunt was gone, Joanna and Ellen returned to their usual manner of living: at first Ellen found a great insipidity in her ordinary occupations. The day seemed unusually tedious, but this by degrees wore off; and had she never seen Mordaunt again, she would certainly have always remembered him with peculiar interest; but the peace of her mind was undisturbed: yet Mordaunt's conversation had been of the most dangerous tendency. What girl of seventeen, tinctured with the natural romance which a life in a country of such sublimity as Wales almost necessarily produces in an ardent mind and feeling heart, but might be led by the voice of flattery to believe herself superior to the mere common employments of domestic life; yet if the flatterer mean to substitute no higher line of occupation in their stead, is it not probable that unhappiness, if not a dereliction from virtue, may be the consequence? Mordaunt's suggestions therefore to a mind more practised in worldly guile would have rendered his intentions extremely equivocal; and the very little Mr. Ross had seen of him made him not only very glad that he was gone, but led him to wish earnestly he might not return; and when a fortnight had elapsed, and no books or packages arrived at the cottage of the Widow Grey, Ross, and, to say the truth, Joanna also, began to hope he would not return. Joanna liked Mordaunt as a companion, and had none of those fears which had crept into the mind of Ross: but her love for her brother, and the certainty that Mordaunt was preferred to him by Ellen, gave her a sort of prejudice against him, and she could not help shewing a sort of triumph at his not returning. Ellen, whose temper was as sweet as her understanding was excellent, bore the little taunts Joanna now and then threw out on her supposed disappointment with great mildness; but when Joanna accused Mordaunt of caprice and insincerity, she sometimes defended him, with candour indeed, but with a little warmth, which excited fresh displeasure in Joanna: and these little disputes insensibly abated the pleasure they used to feel in the society of each other. Nothing could be more ill-judged than Joanna's conduct on this occasion: had she remained silent, Ellen would never have spoken and seldom thought of Mordaunt; but by being forced continually to defend either herself or him, he became more interesting to her; her generous heart not bearing to hear him accused probably without a cause: thus, Joanna, like all people who suffer themselves to be misled by prejudice and ill-humour, increased the evil she wished to obviate, and by rendering her own society less desirable to Ellen, left her more at liberty to receive Mordaunt's visits, if he really should return; and to return it seemed probable at length he intended: for, about three weeks after his departure, several large packages were brought in a light cart to the Widow Grey's, and the driver said he had