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matter
for after discussion—but that at present his father was anxious, as
might be seen from the extract to ascertain whether Mr. Wilkins could
secure him from the contingency of having his son's widow and possible
children thrown upon his hands, by giving Ellinor a dowry; and if so, it
was gently insinuated, what would be the amount of the same.
    When Mr. Wilkins received this letter it startled him out of a happy day-
dream. He liked Ralph Corbet and the whole connection quite well enough
to give his consent to an engagement; and sometimes even he was glad to
think that Ellinor's future was assured, and that she would have a
protector and friends after he was dead and gone. But he did not want
them to assume their responsibilities so soon. He had not distinctly
contemplated her marriage as an event likely to happen before his death.
He could not understand how his own life would go on without her: or
indeed why she and Ralph Corbet could not continue just as they were at
present. He came down to breakfast with the letter in his hand. By
Ellinor's blushes, as she glanced at the handwriting, he knew that she
had heard from her lover by the same post; by her tender
caresses—caresses given as if to make up for the pain which the prospect
of her leaving him was sure to cause him—he was certain that she was
aware of the contents of the letter. Yet he put it in his pocket, and
tried to forget it.
    He did this not merely from his reluctance to complete any arrangements
which might facilitate Ellinor's marriage. There was a further annoyance
connected with the affair. His money matters had been for some time in
an involved state; he had been living beyond his income, even reckoning
that, as he always did, at the highest point which it ever touched. He
kept no regular accounts, reasoning with himself—or, perhaps, I should
rather say persuading himself—that there was no great occasion for
regular accounts, when he had a steady income arising from his
profession, as well as the interest of a good sum of money left him by
his father; and when, living in his own house near a country town where
provisions were cheap, his expenditure for his small family—only one
child—could never amount to anything like his incomings from the above-
mentioned sources. But servants and horses, and choice wines and rare
fruit-trees, and a habit of purchasing any book or engraving that may
take the fancy, irrespective of the price, run away with money, even
though there be but one child. A year or two ago, Mr. Wilkins had been
startled into a system of exaggerated retrenchment—retrenchment which
only lasted about six weeks—by the sudden bursting of a bubble
speculation in which he had invested a part of his father's savings. But
as soon as the change in his habits, necessitated by his new economies,
became irksome, he had comforted himself for his relapse into his former
easy extravagance of living by remembering the fact that Ellinor was
engaged to the son of a man of large property: and that though Ralph was
only the second son, yet his mother's estate must come to him, as Mr.
Ness had already mentioned, on first hearing of her engagement.
    Mr. Wilkins did not doubt that he could easily make Ellinor a fitting
allowance, or even pay down a requisite dowry; but the doing so would
involve an examination into the real state of his affairs, and this
involved distasteful trouble. He had no idea how much more than mere
temporary annoyance would arise out of the investigation. Until it was
made, he decided in his own mind that he would not speak to Ellinor on
the subject of her lover's letter. So for the next few days she was kept
in suspense, seeing little of her father; and during the short times she
was with him she was made aware that he was nervously anxious to keep the
conversation engaged on general topics rather than on the one which she
had at heart. As I have already said, Mr. Corbet had written to her by
the same post as that on which