“My darling,” said her mother, again. “We all say that in our trouble, and yet we know that we have got to bear it all the same. It is intolerable--one says that a thousand times--and yet it has to be put up with. All the time that we have been flattering ourselves that nobody took any notice it has been a delusion, Elinor. How could it be otherwise? We must set our faces----” “Not I, mamma!” she said. “Not I! I must go away----” “Go away? Elinor!” “Among strangers; where nobody has heard of me before--where nobody can make any remark. To live like this, among a crowd of people who think they ought to know everything that one is doing--who are nothing to you, and yet whom you stand in awe of and must explain everything to!--it is this that is intolerable. I cannot, cannot bear it. Mother, I will take my baby, and I will go away----” “Where?” said Mrs. Dennistoun, with all the colour fading out of her face. What panic had taken her I cannot tell. She grew pale to her lips, and the words were almost inaudible which she breathed forth. I think she thought for a moment that Elinor’s heart had turned, that she was going back to her husband to find refuge with him from the strife of tongues which she could not encounter alone. All the blood went back upon the mother’s heart--yet she set herself to suppress all emotion, and if this should be so, not to oppose it--for was it not the thing of all others to be desired--the thing which everybody would approve, the reuniting of those whom God had put together? Though it might be death to her, not a word of opposition would she say. “Where? how can I tell where--anywhere, anywhere out of the world,” cried Elinor, in the boiling tide of her impatience and wretchedness, “where nobody ever heard of us before, where there will be no one to ask, no one to require a reason, where we should be free to move when we please and do as we please. Let me go, mother. It seemed too dear, too peaceful to come home, but now home itself has become intolerable. I will take my baby and I will go--to the farthest point the railway can take me to--with no servant to betray me, not even an address. Mother, let me go away and be lost; let me be as if I had never been.” “And me--am I to remain to bear the brunt behind?” “And you--mamma! Oh, I am the most unworthy creature. I don’t deserve to have you, I that am always giving you pain. Why should I unroot you from your place where you have lived so long--from your flowers, and your landscape, and your pretty rooms that were always a comfort to think of in that horrible time when I was away? I always liked to think of you here, happy and quiet, in the place you had chosen.” “Flowers and landscapes are pretty things,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, whose colour had begun to come again a little, “but they don’t make up for one’s children. We must not do anything rashly, Elinor; but if what you mean is really that you will go away to a strange place among strangers----”