Elinor returned almost instantly. 'Hasten, hasten,' she cried, 'Ellis! There is no time to be lost. Scene the first is all prepared. Albert Harleigh, at this very moment, is poring over the county map in the hall. Run and tell him that you have something of deep importance to communicate to him to-morrow.' 'But may he not--if he means to go--desire to hear it immediately?' Elinor, without answering, forced her away. Harleigh, whose back was to the stair-entrance, seemed intently examining some route. The distress of Ellis was extreme how to call for his notice, and how to execute her commission when it should be obtained. Slowly and unwillingly approaching a little nearer, 'I am afraid,' she hesitatingly said, 'that I must appear extremely importunate, but--' The astonishment with which he turned round, at the sound of her voice, could only be equalled by the pleasure with which he met her eyes; and only surpassed, by the sudden burst of clashing ideas with which he saw her own instantly drop; while her voice, also, died away; her cheeks became the colour of crimson; and she was evidently and wholly at a loss what to say. 'Importunate?' he gently repeated, 'impossible!' yet he waited her own explanation. Her confusion now became deeper; any sort of interrogation would have encouraged and aided her; but his quiet, though attentive forbearance seemed the result of some suspension of opinion. Ashamed and grieved, she involuntarily looked away, as she indistinctly pronounced, 'I must appear ... very strange ... but I am constrained.... Circumstances of which I am not the mistress, force me to ... desire--to request--that to-morrow morning--or any part of to-morrow ... it might be possible that I could ... or rather that you should be able to ... to hear something that ... that....' The total silence with which he listened, shewed so palpably his expectation of some competent reason for so singular an address, that her inability to clear herself, and her chagrin in the idea of forfeiting any part of an esteem which had proved so often her protection, grew almost insupportably painful, and she left her phrase unfinished; yet considered her commission to be fulfilled, and was moving away. 'To-morrow,' he said, 'I meant to have accompanied my brother, whose affairs--whatever may be his fate--oblige him to return to town: but if ... if to-morrow--' He had now, to impede her retreat, stept softly between her and the staircase, and perceived, in her blushes, the force which she had put upon her modesty; and read, in the expression of her glistening eyes, that an innate sense of delicacy was still more wounded, by the demand which she had made, even than her habits of life. With respect, therefore, redoubled, and an interest beyond all calculation increased, he went on; 'If to-morrow ... or next day--or any part of the week, you have any commands for me, nothing shall hurry me hence till they are obeyed.'