The poor girl had of course no right to be happy in her new and guilty relation, and yet she was so for a time--almost entirely happy. She had been wooed and won (oh, how fearfully _won_!) under an explicit promise of marriage and with continual repetitions of words of respect which left her no room to doubt the good faith of the man who uttered them. She was more than a little weak, as has already been said; very unsuspicious and clinging in her trust; and neither wise enough to know that the man who respected her sufficiently to make her his wife, no insurmountable obstacle lying in his way, would have made her so before laying his hand on the hem of the garment of her purity,--or precise enough to feel that any disgrace had really fallen upon her, which would not be removed the moment that promise of marriage was fulfilled. Then, by a natural law which can be easily understood if it cannot be explained, the young girl a thousand times more deeply loved the master of her destiny because he had made himself entirely so; and for a time, at least, the conduct of the victor towards his helpless captive was full of such exquisite tenderness in private that she could not have found room for a regret had her heart even revolted at the situation in which she was placed. He did not speak of an immediate fulfilment of his promise of marriage--no, but he had before hinted that owing to certain temporary circumstances (oh, those "temporary circumstances"!) the hour when he could make her his own before the world must be yet a little delayed; and so the young heart took no fright at the procrastination. Good Miss Hester, meanwhile, saw nothing suspicious and suspected nothing improper. Perhaps she saw a deeper light of tenderness in the eyes of the poor betrayed girl, when they beamed upon him who should have been her husband; and perhaps she saw that her brother treated his ward with even more delicate attention than he had shown during the months before; but the spinster's eyes had no skill to read beneath the mask of either, and if she thought upon the subject at all her impressions were not likely to go farther than the mental remark: "How good Philip is to Eleanor; how obedient to him she seems to be; and how happy for both that he ever became her guardian and she his charge!"