The astonished Harleigh, who, hitherto, had rigorously avoided meeting the eyes of Ellis, now turned towards her, with an expression in which all that was not surprise was resentment; while Elinor, seeming suddenly suspended, faintly pronounced, 'Ellis--deluding Ellis!--what is it you say?' 'I am no deluder!' cried Ellis, yet more eagerly: 'Rely, rely upon my plighted honour!' Harleigh now looked utterly confounded; but Ellis only saw, and seemed only to breathe for Elinor, who recovering, as if by miracle, her complexion, her voice, and the brightness of her eyes, rapturously exclaimed, 'Oh Harleigh!--Is there, then, sympathy in our fate? Do you, too, love in vain?'--And, from a change of emotion, too sudden and too mighty for the shattered state of her nerves, she sunk senseless upon the floor. The motive to the strange protestations of Ellis was now apparent: a poniard dropt from the hand of Elinor as she fell, of which, while she spoke her farewell, Ellis had caught a glance. Harleigh seemed himself to require the aid that he was called upon to bestow. He looked at Elinor with a mixture of compassion and horrour, and, taking possession of the poniard, 'Unhappy Elinor!' he cried, 'into what a chaos of errour and of crime have these fatal new systems bewildered thee!' The revival of Elinor was almost immediate; and though, at first, she seemed to have lost the remembrance of what had happened, the sight of Ellis and Harleigh soon brought it back. She looked from one to the other, as if searching her destiny; and then, with quick impatience, though somewhat checked by shame, cried, 'Ellis! have you not mocked me?' Ellis, covered with blushes and confusion, addressing herself to Harleigh, said, 'Pardon, Mr Harleigh, my seeming presumption, where no option has been offered me; and where such an option is as wide from my expectations as it would be from my desert. This terrible crisis must be my apology.' A shivering like that of an ague-fit again shook the agitated Elinor, who, ejaculating, 'What farce is this?--Fool! fool! shall I thus sleepily be duped?' looked keenly around for her lost weapon. 'Duped? no, Madam,' cried Ellis, in a tone impressive of veracity: 'if I had the honour to be better known to Miss Joddrel, one assertion, I flatter myself, would suffice: my word is given; it has never yet been broken!' While this declaration, though softened by a sigh the most melancholy, struck cold to the heart of Harleigh, its effect upon Elinor was that of an extacy which seemed the offspring of frenzy. 'Do I awake, then,' she cried, 'from agony and death--agony, impossible to support! death, willing and welcome! to renewed life? to an interesting, however deplorable, existence? is my fate in harmony with the fate of Harleigh? Has he, even he! given his soul,--his noble soul!--to one who esteems and admires him, yet who will not be his? Can Harleigh love in vain?'