"How critical you are, John! perhaps it is, but what does it matter at his age? any name does for a baby. Why, you yourself, as grave as you are now----" "Don't, aunt," said John. "It is a grave matter enough as it appears to me." "Not for the present; not for the present, John." "Perhaps not for the present: if you prefer to put off all the difficulties till they grow up and crush you. Have there been any overtures, all this time, from--the other side?" "Dear John, don't overwhelm me all in a moment, in the first pleasure of seeing you, both with the troubles that are behind and the troubles that are in front of us," the poor lady said. CHAPTER XXXI. The weather was fine, which was by no means always a certainty at Waterdale, and Elinor had become a great pedestrian, and was ready to accompany John in his walks, which were long and varied. It was rather a curious test to which to subject himself after the long time he had been away, and the other tests through which he had gone. Never had he been so entirely the companion of Elinor, never before had they spent so many hours together without other society. At Windyhill, indeed, their interviews had been quite unrestrained, but then Elinor had many friends and interests in the parish and outside of it, visits to pay and duties to perform. Now she had her child, which occupied her mornings and evenings, but left her free for hours of rambling among the hills, for long walks, from which she came back blooming with the fresh air and breezes which had blown her about, ruffling her hair, and stirring up her spirits and thoughts. Sometimes when there has been heavy and premature suffering there occurs thus in the young another spring-time, an almost childhood of natural, it may be said superficial pleasure--the power of being amused, and of enjoying every simple satisfaction without any _arrière pensée_ like a child. She had recovered her strength and vigour in the mountain air--and in that freedom of being unknown, with no look ever directed to her which reminded her of the past, no question which brought back her troubles, had blossomed out into that fine youthful maturity of twenty-six, which has already an advantage over the earlier girlhood, the perfection of the woman grown. Elinor had thought of many things and understood many things, which she had still regarded with the high assumptions of ignorance three or four years ago. And poor John, who had tried so hard to find himself a mate that suited him, who had studied so many girls more beautiful, more accomplished than Elinor, in the hope of goading himself, so to speak, into love, and had not succeeded--and who had felt so strongly that another man's wife must not occupy so much of his thoughts, nor another man's child give him an unwilling pleasure which was almost fatherly--poor John felt himself placed in a position more trying than any he had known before, more difficult to steer his way through. He had never had so much of her