arms, bore her away, lying back like one dead (so exhausted was she by
the terrible emotion they had forced on her childish heart), into his
study, a little room opening out of the grand library, where on happy
evenings, never to come again, he and his wife were wont to retire to
have coffee together, and then perhaps stroll out of the glass-door into
the open air, the shrubbery, the fields--never more to be trodden by
those dear feet. What passed between father and child in this seclusion
none could tell. Late in the evening Ellinor's supper was sent for, and
the servant who brought it in saw the child lying as one dead in her
father's arms, and before he left the room watched his master feeding
her, the girl of six years of age, with as tender care as if she had been
a baby of six months.




CHAPTER III.


From that time the tie between father and daughter grew very strong and
tender indeed. Ellinor, it is true, divided her affection between her
baby sister and her papa; but he, caring little for babies, had only a
theoretic regard for his younger child, while the elder absorbed all his
love. Every day that he dined at home Ellinor was placed opposite to him
while he ate his late dinner; she sat where her mother had done during
the meal, although she had dined and even supped some time before on the
more primitive nursery fare. It was half pitiful, half amusing, to see
the little girl's grave, thoughtful ways and modes of speech, as if
trying to act up to the dignity of her place as her father's companion,
till sometimes the little head nodded off to slumber in the middle of