His duties would detain him about home for another year, to be still
fêted by the town, and idolised by his sisters, who were never tired of
speculating upon eligible matches for him.

From the very first, Elizabeth, who, in her utter ignorance how to
behave, committed one egregious blunder after another, had perceived
with her strong sense that it would require all the cleverness and
patience she possessed to enable her to maintain the situation; and she
began by following Madam Beck about untiringly like a lamb. Many a
painful scene had she to go through during the earlier period of their
connection, and she bore them with a quiet gentleness which Madam Beck
took for modest docility, but which had its real origin in a fixed
determination to succeed. Every now and then, however, she would give it
up as hopeless, and would seat herself disconsolately by the window with
her cheek upon her hand, and gaze wistfully out over the harbour. She
longed so for cold fresh air, and would end by throwing up the window
and stretching herself with her heated face as far out of it as she
possibly could, till Madam Beck would come in, and in a stern voice call
her back. Madam Beck, in her irritation, used to say that it was almost
as if they had taken a wild thing into the house.

Carl Beck understood very well what she was going through, and would
occasionally throw her an encouraging look; but Elizabeth affected
always not to understand it. On one occasion, however, when she was
corrected in his presence, she hurriedly left the room, and throwing
herself on her bed, lay there and sobbed as if her heart would break.

She had been trusted one afternoon, shortly after, to bring in the
tea-tray, on which, without thinking what she was doing, she had placed
the chafing-dish with the boiling teakettle. It fell as she was carrying