The days of the last week hurried along like the grains of sand out of an hour-glass when they are nearly gone. It is true that almost everything was done--a few little bits of stitching, a few things still to be "got up" alone remaining, a handkerchief to mark with Elinor's name, a bit of lace to arrange, just enough to keep up a possibility of something to do for Mrs. Dennistoun in the blank of all other possibilities--for to interest herself or to occupy herself about anything that should be wanted beyond that awful limit of the wedding-day was of course out of the question. Life seemed to stop there for the mother, as it was virtually to begin for the child; though indeed to Elinor also, notwithstanding her love, it was visible more in the light of a point at which all the known and certain ended, and where the unknown and almost inconceivable began. The curious thing was that this barrier which was placed across life for them both, got somehow between them in those last days which should have been the most tender climax of their intercourse. They had a thousand things to say to each other, but they said very little. In the evening after dinner, whether they went out into the garden together to watch the setting of the young moon, or whether they sat together in that room which had witnessed all Elinor's commencements of life, free to talk as no one else in the world could ever talk to either of them, they said very little to each other, and what they said was of the most commonplace kind. "It is a lovely night; how clear one can see the road on the other side of the combe!" "And what a bright star that is close to the moon! I wish I knew a little more about the stars." "They are just as beautiful," Mrs. Dennistoun would say, "as if you knew everything about them, Elinor." "Are you cold, mamma? I am sure I can see you shiver. Shall I run and get you a shawl?" "It is a little chilly: but perhaps it will be as well to go in now," the mother said. And then indoors: "Do you think you will like this lace made up as a jabot, Elinor?" "You are giving me all your pretty things, though you know you understand lace much better than I do." "Oh, that doesn't matter," Mrs. Dennistoun said hurriedly; "that is a taste which comes with time. You will like it as well as I do when you are as old as I am." "You are not so dreadfully old, mamma." "No, that's the worst of it," Mrs. Dennistoun would say, and then break out into a laugh. "Look at the shadow that handkerchief makes--how fantastic it is!" she cried. She neither cared for the moon, nor for the quaintness of the shadows, nor for the lace which she was pulling into dainty folds to show its delicate pattern--for none of all these things, but for her only child, who was going from her, and to whom she had a hundred, and yet a hundred, things to say: but none of them ever came from her lips. "Mary Dale has not seen your things, Elinor: she asked if she might come to-morrow."