'If you will allow me,' said he, in taking it, 'to give you my plain opinion, when I have read it.... Where may I have the pleasure of seeing you?'
Revived by this question, she eagerly answered, 'Wherever Mrs Maple will permit.'
Harleigh, who, in the scowl upon Mrs Maple's face, read a direction that they should remain where they were, would not wait for her to give it utterance; but, taking the hand of Ellis, with a precipitation to which she yielded from surprise, though with blushing shame, said, 'In this next room we shall be nearest to give the answer to Mrs Maple;' and led her to the adjoining apartment.
He did not dare shut the door, but he conducted her to the most distant window; and, having expressed, by his eyes, far stronger thanks for her trust than he ventured to pronounce with his voice, was beginning to read the letter; but Ellis, gently stopping him, said, 'Before you look at this, let me beg you, Sir, to believe, that the hard necessity of my strange situation, could alone have induced me to suffer you to see what is so every way unfit for your perusal. But Miss Joddrel has herself made known that she left a message with me for Mrs Maple; what right, then, have I to withhold it? Yet how--advise me, I entreat,--how can I deliver it? And--with respect to what you will find relative to Lord Melbury--I need not, I trust, mortify myself by disclaiming, or vindicating--'
He interrupted her with warmth: 'No!' he cried, 'with me you can have nothing to vindicate! Of whatever would not be perfectly right, I believe you incapable.'
Ellis thanked him expressively, and begged that he would now read the letter, and favour her with his counsel.
He complied, meaning to hurry it rapidly over, to gain time for a yet more interesting subject; but, struck, moved, and shocked by its contents, he was drawn from himself, drawn even from Ellis, to its writer. 'Unhappy Elinor!' he cried, 'this is yet more wild than I had believed you! this flight, where you can expect no pursuit! this concealment, where you can fear no persecution! But her intellects are under the controul of her feelings,--and judgment has no guide so dangerous.'
Ellis gently enquired what she must say to Mrs Maple.