CHAPTER VI.

_Sol._ Why, please your honourable lordship, we were talking
here and there,--this and that.--_The Stranger_.

AUBREY had been closeted with Evelyn the whole morning; and, simultaneous
with his arrival, came to her the news of the departure of Maltravers.
It was an intelligence that greatly agitated and unnerved her; and,
coupling that event with his solemn words on the previous night, Evelyn
asked herself, in wonder, what sentiments she could have inspired in
Maltravers. Could he love her,--her, so young, so inferior, so
uninformed? Impossible! Alas! alas! for Maltravers! His genius, his
gifts, his towering qualities,--all that won the admiration, almost the
awe, of Evelyn,--placed him at a distance from her heart! When she asked
herself if he loved her, she did not ask, even in that hour, if she loved
him. But even the question she did ask, her judgment answered erringly
in the negative. Why should he love, and yet fly her? She understood
not his high-wrought scruples, his self-deluding belief. Aubrey was more
puzzled than enlightened by his conversation with his pupil; only one
thing seemed certain,--her delight to return to the cottage and her
mother.

Evelyn could not sufficiently recover her composure to mix with the party
below; and Aubrey, at the sound of the second dinner-bell, left her to
her solitude, and bore her excuses to Mrs. Merton.

"Dear me!" said that worthy lady; "I am so sorry. I thought Miss Cameron
looked fatigued at breakfast, and there was something hysterical in her
spirits; and I suppose the surprise of your arrival has upset her.
Caroline, my dear, you had better go and see what she would like to have