When Miss Hilary reached home Elizabeth opened the door to her; the parlor¹ was deserted².  
Miss Leaf had gone to lie down, and Miss Selina was away to see the
Lord Mayor's Show with Mr. Peter Ascott.
"With Mr. Peter Ascott!" Hilary was a little surprised; but on second thoughts she found it natural; Selina was glad of any amusement—to her, not only the narrowness but the dullness of their poverty was inexpressibly galling³. "She will be back to dinner, I suppose?"
 
"I don't know," said Elizabeth briefly⁴.
 
Had Miss Hilary been less preoccupied⁵, she would have noticed something not quite right about the girl—something that at any other time would have aroused the direct question, "What is the matter, Elizabeth?" For Miss Hilary did not consider it beneath her dignity to observe that things might occasionally go wrong with this solitary⁶ young woman, away from her friends, and exposed to all the annoyances⁷ of London lodgings⁸; that many trifles might happen to worry and perplex her. If the mistress could not set them right, she could at least give the word of kindly⁹ sympathy, as precious to "a poor servant" as to the Queen on her throne.
 
This time, however, it came not, and Elizabeth disappeared below stairs immediately.
 
The girl was revolving¹⁰ in her own mind a difficult ethical¹¹ question. To-day, for the first time in her life, she had not "told Miss Hilary every thing." Two things had happened, and she could not make up her mind as to whether she ought to communicate them.
 
Now Elizabeth had a conscience, by nature a very tender one, and which, from circumstances, had been cultivated into a much higher sensitiveness than, alas¹²! is common among her class, or, indeed, in any class. This, if an error, was Miss Hilary's doing; it probably caused Elizabeth a few more miseries¹³, and vexations, and painful shocks in the world than she would have had had she imbibed¹⁵ only the ordinary tone of morality, especially the morality of ordinary domestic servants; but it was an error upon which, in summing up her life, the Recording¹⁶ Angel would gravely smile.
 
The first trial had happened at breakfast time. Ascott, descending¹⁷ earlier than his wont¹⁸, had asked her. Did any gentleman, short and dirty, with a hooked nose, inquire for him yesterday?
 
Elizabeth thought a minute, and recollected¹⁹ that some person answering the above not too flattering description had called, but refused to leave his name, saying he did not know the ladies, but was a particular friend of Mr. Leaf's.
 
Ascott laughed. "So he is—a very particular friend; but my aunts would not fancy him, and I don't want him to come here. Say, if he calls, that I'm gone out of town."
 
"Very well, sir. Shall you start before dinner?" said Elizabeth, whose practical mind immediately recurred²⁰ to that meal, and to the joint²¹, always contrived²² to be hot on the days that Ascott dined at home.
 
He seemed excessively tickled²³. "Bless you, you are the greatest innocent! Just say what I tell you, and never mind—hush! here's Aunt Hilary."
 
And Miss Hilary's anxious face, white with long wakefulness, had put out of Elizabeth's head the answer that was coming; indeed the matter slipped from her mind altogether, in consequence of another circumstance which gave her much more perplexity.
 
During her young mistress's absence, supposing Miss Selina out too, and Miss Leaf up stairs, she had come suddenly into the parlor without knocking. There, to her amazement²⁴, she saw Miss Selina and Mr. Ascott standing²⁵, in close conversation, over the fire. They were so engrossed²⁶ that they did not notice her, and she shut door again immediately. But what confounded her was, that she was certain, absolutely certain, Mr. Ascott had his arm round Miss Selina's waist!
 
Now that was no business of hers, and yet the faithful domestic was a good deal troubled; still more so, when, by Miss Leaf's excessive surprise at hearing of the visitor who had come and gone, carrying Miss Selina away to the city, she was certain the elder sister was completely in the dark as to any thing going to happen in the family.
 
Could it be a wedding? Could Miss Selina really love, and be intending to marry, that horrid²⁷ little man? For strange to say, this young servant had, what many a young beauty of rank and fashion has not, or has lost forever—the true, pure, womanly creed²⁸, that loving and marrying are synonymous terms; that to let a man put his arm round your waist when you do not intend to marry him, or to intend to marry him for money or any thing else when you do not really love him, are things quite impossible and incredible to any womanly mind. A creed somewhat out of date, and perhaps existing only in stray nooks of the world; but thank God! it does exist. Hilary had it, and she had taught it to Elizabeth.
 
"I wonder whether Miss Hilary knows of this? I wonder what she would say to it?"
 
And now arose the perplexing ethical question aforesaid, as to whether Elizabeth ought to tell her.
 
It was one of Miss Hilary's doctrines—the same for the kitchen as for the parlor, nay²⁹, preached strongest in the kitchen, where the mysteries of the parlor are often so cruelly exposed—that a secret accidentally found out should be kept as sacred as if actually confided³⁰; also, that the secret of an enemy should no more be betrayed than that of a beloved and trusting friend.
 
"Miss Selina isn't my enemy," smiled Elizabeth: "but I'm not overfond of her, and so I'd rather not tell of her, or vex¹⁴ her if I can help it. Any how, I'll keep it to myself for a bit."
 
But the secret weighed heavily upon her, and besides, her honest heart felt a certain diminution³¹ of respect for Miss Selina. What could she see to like in that common looking, commonplace man, whom she could not have met a dozen times, of whose domestic life she knew nothing, and whose personality Elizabeth, with the sharp observation often found in her class, probably because coarse people do not care to hide their coarseness from servants, had speedily set down at her own valuation—
 
"Neither carriage nor horses, nor nothing, will ever make him a gentleman?"
 
He, however, sent Miss Selina home magnificently in the said carriage; Ascott with her, who had been picked up somewhere in the City and who came in to his dinner, without the slightest reference to going "out of town."
 
But in spite of her Lord Mayor's Show, and the great attention which she said she had received from "various members of the Common Council of the City of London," Miss Selina was, for her, meditative³², and did not talk quite so much as usual. There was in the little parlor an uncomfortable atmosphere, as if all of them had something on their minds. Hilary felt the ice must be broken, and if she did not do it nobody else would. So she said, stealing her hand into Johanna's under shelter of the dim fire-light, "Selina, I wanted to have a little family consultation³³. I have just received an offer."
 
"An offer!" repeated Miss Selina, with a visible start. "Oh, I forgot; you went to see your friend, Miss Balquidder, this morning. Did you get any thing out of her? Has she any nephews and nieces wanting a governess?"
 
"She has no relations at all. But I will just tell you the story of my visit."
 
"I hope it's interesting," said Ascott, who was lying on the sofa, half asleep, his general habit after dinner. He woke, however, during his Aunt Hilary's relation, and when she reached its climax³⁴, that the offer was for her to manage a stationer's shop, he burst out heartily³⁵ laughing:
 
"Well, that is a rich idea. I'll come and buy of you. You'll look so pretty standing behind a counter."
 
But Selina said, angrily, "You cannot even think of such a thing. It would be a disgrace to the family."
 
"No," said Hilary, clasping tightly her eldest³⁶ sister's hand—they two had already talked the matter over: "I can not see any disgrace. If our family is so poor that the women must earn their living as well as the men, all we have to see is that it should be honestly earned. What do you say, Ascott?"
 
She looked earnestly at him; she wanted sorely to find out what he really thought.
 
But Ascott took it, as he did every thing, very easily. "I don't see why Aunt Selina should make such a fuss. Why need you do anything, Aunt Hilary? Can't we hold out a little longer, and live upon tick till I get into practice? Of course, I shall then take care of you all; I'm the head of the family. How horribly dark this room is!"
 
He started up, and gave the fire a fierce poke³⁷, which consumed in five minutes a large lump of coal that Hilary had hoped—oh, cruel, sordid³⁸ economy—would have lasted half the evening.
 
She broke the uneasy silence which followed by askin............