Three months had glided away with, at the end of that time, matters still in the same unsatisfactory state. There had been no open collision between Max Bray and his sturdy rival; but Laura had long since learned that, while Max persisted in his present course, there was no prospect for her to be even on friendly terms with Charley Vining. She had told her brother this; but he had angrily bade her be silent and wait, when all would be right in the end.

So Laura waited, to find that Charley now totally ignored her existence, spending his time either in sitting moodily in his own room, or else in riding over to Laneton.

But Max Bray was not idle: he literally haunted Laneton; so that at last Ella was quite confined to the house, and Mrs Brandon had looked grave.

Then came a visit from Sir Philip Vining, who again saw Ella, to part from her with a kind, gentle, fatherly farewell; and this was the result:

There were tears flowing fast at Copse Hall; for her few months’ stay at Mrs Brandon’s had been sufficient to endear Ella to all there.

Edward, the hard-faced, had confided to cook that he didn’t know how things would go now; while upon cook weeping, and drying her eyes with her apron, he told her that her conduct was “childish, and wus.”

The housemaid looked as if she had a violent cold in her head; while the children sobbed aloud; for the day had arrived when Ella Bedford was to leave Copse Hall; Mrs Brandon, though knowing well enough for some time past that such a course would be the better, yet only now having given her consent, and that too most unwillingly.

Ella Bedford was to leave Copse Hall, but only for a year. Mrs Brandon declared a twelvemonth would no doubt serve to alter the state of affairs, and then she could return.

“For I shall never be happy till I get you back again, child!” Mrs Brandon exclaimed. “And mind this, my love: I hope that you will be happy with Mrs Marter, who is a distant relative of my late husband; but, come what may in the future, there is always a home for you here. Write and say you are coming, or come without writing, and you shall always find a warm welcome. These are no unmeaning words, child, but the utterances of one wh............