"Oh, ma'am!--Miss Ella! My master would turn in his grave if he could hear your words. Give up the old place? No--no! And not a soul who knows the secret but ourselves and Jago--and the nurse: and their mouths are sealed!" "If my uncle, out of that larger knowledge which I doubt not is now his, were permitted to counsel me, do you not think he would urge me to do that which is just and honourable?" said Ella, condescending to reason with him, in pity for his evident wretchedness. "Your master sees now with other eyes than those he saw with when on earth; he would not ask me to keep what is not, and never has been, mine; that which he would have me do, could he speak to me, is the thing I must do, and no other." Aaron listened, but he was not convinced. "To think of the estate going to them that the master hated so! Sneaks and spies----" "Not another word!" severely spoke Miss Winter. "You forget yourself, Aaron." The old man bowed his head and let his arms fall by his side with a gesture of despair. Turning, he hobbled slowly from the room. "Poor, faithful old soul!" cried Ella, as she gazed after him. "Wrongly though he has acted, it was done in loyalty to my uncle and me. And so, Edward," she added, bravely smiling through her tears, "you see that you will not have a well-dowered bride." "So much the better, sweet one," answered Conroy, stealing his arm round her. "You will then owe something to me, instead of my owing so much to you. Nobody can now call me a fortune-hunter." "They have not called you one." "Have they not! Ask that old man, now gone out, what he thinks of me in his private thoughts. Ask your Aunt Gertrude; ask Mrs. Toynbee--ask the world." "I am sure you have never been _that_." "I don't think I have. But, Ella, it will be a sore parting--this of yours from Heron Dyke." "I try not to think of it yet. When the day shall come I shall try to bear it as I best may." "Who knows but that old gentleman at Nunham Priors will give it up to you to live in?" suggested Conroy. "Has he not said something of the kind to you?" "And do you think I would impose upon his generosity by staying? No, no. This is the place of his ancestors, and it must be his--his entirely; and his son's after him. You forget he has a son, Edward." "One Master Frank, I believe. A graceless young fellow, by all accounts." "That may be; but he is still a Denison, and the heir after his father. Besides--you have indeed been speaking without thought, Edward!--how could poor people, such as we shall be, speaking comparatively, live at a grand old place like this? It requires a grand income to keep it up." "Dear me! So it does." "You had better give me up, perhaps, Edward, now things have turned out for the worse," she suggested, her voice slightly trembling. "I shall only be a clog upon your ambition, and keep you down."