Elinor, surprized and softened, looked at her with an expression of involuntary admiration, as she answered, 'I believe you to be good, Ellis!--I exonerate you from all delusory arts; and, internally, I never thought you guilty,--or I had never feared you! Fool! mad fool, that I have been, I am my own executioner! my distracting impatience to learn the depth of my danger, was what put you together! taught you to know, to appreciate one another! With my own precipitate hand, I have dug the gulph into which I am fallen! Your dignified patience, your noble modesty--Oh fatal Ellis!--presented a contrast that plunged a dagger into all my efforts! Rash, eager ideot! I conceived suspense to be my greatest bane!--Oh fool! eternal fool!--self-willed, and self-destroying!--for the single thrill of one poor moment's returning doubt--I would not suffer martyrdom!' She wept, and hid her face within the carriage; but, holding out her hand to Juliet, 'Adieu, Ellis!' she cried, 'I struggle hardly not to wish you any ill; and I have never given you my malediction: yet Oh!--that you had never been born!'-- She snatched away her hand, and precipitately drew up all the blinds, to hide her emotion; but, presently, letting one of them down, called out, with resumed vivacity, and an air of gay defiance, 'Marry him, Ellis!--marry him at once! I have always felt that I should be less mad, if my honour called upon me for reason!--my honour and my pride!' The groom demanded orders. 'Drive to the end of the world!' she answered, impatiently, 'so you ask me no questions!' and, forcibly adding, 'Farewell, too happy Ellis!' she again drew up all the blinds, and, in a minute, was out of sight. Juliet deplored her fate with the sincerest concern; and ruminated upon her virtues, and attractive qualities, till their drawbacks diminished from her view, and left nothing but unaffected wonder, that Harleigh could resist them: 'twas a wonder, nevertheless, that every feeling of her heart, in defiance of every conflict, rose, imperiously, to separate from regret. At the cottage, she found her recovered property, which she now concluded,--for her recollection was gone,--that she had dropt upon her entrance into the room occupied by Harleigh, before she had perceived that it was not empty. Here, too, almost immediately afterwards, her messenger returned with a letter, which had remained more than a week at the post-office; whither it had been sent back by the farmer, who had refused to risk advancing the postage.