“Yes--and for ever!” said the girl, turning round upon herself. “I know you think I don’t know my own mind; but there will never be any change in me. Oh, what does John mean, sitting all by himself in that stuffy room? He has had time to smoke a hundred cigarettes!” “Elinor, you must not forget it is rather hard upon John to be brought down to settle your difficulties for you. What do you want with him? Only that he should advise you to do what you have settled upon doing. If he took the other side, how much attention would you give him? You must be reasonable, my dear.” “I would give him every attention,” said Elinor, “if he said what was reasonable. You don’t think mere blind opposition is reasonable, I hope, mamma. To say Don’t, merely, without saying why, what reason is there in that?” “My dear, when you argue I am lost. I am not clever at making out my ground. Mine is not mere blind opposition, or indeed opposition at all. You have been always trained to use your own faculties, and I have never made any stand against you.” “Why not? why not?” said the girl, springing to her feet. “That is just the dreadful, dreadful part of it! Why don’t you say straight out what I am to do and keep to it, and not tell me I must make use of my own faculties? When I do, you put on a face and object. Either don’t object, or tell me point-blank what I am to do.” “Do you think for one moment if I did, you would obey me, Elinor?” “Oh, I don’t know what I might do in that case, for it will never happen. You will never take that responsibility. For my part, if you locked me up in my room and kept me on bread and water I should think that reasonable; but not this kind of letting I dare not wait upon I would, saying I am to exercise my own faculties, and then hesitating and finding fault.” “I daresay, my dear,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, with great tolerance, “that this may be provoking to your impatient mind: but you must put yourself in my place a little, as I try to put myself in yours. I have never seen Mr. Compton. It is probable, or at least quite possible, that if I knew him I might look upon him with your eyes----” “Probable! Possible! What words to use! when all my happiness, all my life, everything I care for is in it: and my own mother thinks it just possible that she might be able to tolerate the man that--the man who----” She flung herself down on her seat again, panting and excited. “Did you wear out Adelaide like that,” she cried, “before she married, papa and you----” “Adelaide was very different, Elinor. She married _selon les règles_ a man whom we all knew. There was no trouble about it. Your father was the one who was impatient then. He thought it too well arranged, too commonplace and satisfactory. You may believe he did not object to that in words, but he laughed at them and it worried him. It has done very well on the whole,” said Mrs. Dennistoun, with a faint sigh.