I didn't want to be rude, Mr.Whitelaw; for you've been civil-spoken enough to me, and I daresay you're a good friend to my father; but I can't help speaking the truth, and you've brought it on yourself with your nonsense." "She's got a devil of a tongue of her own, you see, Whitelaw," said the bailiff, with a savage glance at his daughter; "but she don't mean above a quarter what she says--and when her time comes, she'll do as she's bid, or she's no child of mine." "O, I forgive her," replied Mr.Whitelaw, with a placid air of superiority; "I'm not the man to bear malice against a pretty woman, and to my mind a pretty woman looks all the prettier when she's in a passion.

I'm not in a hurry, you see, Carley; I can bide my time; but I shall never take a mistress to Wyncomb unless I can take the one I like." After this particular evening, Mr.Whitelaw's presence seemed more than ever disagreeable to poor Ellen.

He had the air of her fate somehow, sitting rooted to the hearth night after night, and she grew to regard him with a half superstitious horror, as if he possessed some occult power over her, and could bend her to his wishes in spite of herself.

The very quietude of the man became appalling to her.

Such a man seemed capable of accomplishing anything by the mere force of persistence, by the negative power that lay in his silent nature.
"I suppose he means to sit in that room night after night, smoking his pipe and staring with those pale stupid eyes of his, till I change my mind and promise to marry him," Ellen said to herself, as she meditated angrily on the annoyance of Mr.Whitelaw's courtship.