CHAPTER XIV.
When Miss Hilary reached home Elizabeth opened the door to her; the parlor was deserted.
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 galling.

"She will be back to dinner, I suppose ?" "I don't know," said Elizabeth briefly.
Had Miss Hilary been less preoccupied, 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 solitary young woman, away from her friends, and exposed to all the annoyances of London lodgings; 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 kindly 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 revolving in her own mind a difficult ethical 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, alas! 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 miseries, and vexations, and painful shocks in the world than she would have had had she imbibed 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 Recording Angel would gravely smile.
The first trial had happened at breakfast time.

Ascott, descending earlier than his wont, had asked her.