"They might not know, but they might state their authority," Mrs. Dennistoun said; "and if the Rector cannot be used to help us, surely, John, you are a man of the world, you are not like a woman, unacquainted with evidence. Why should not you do it, though you are, as you kindly say, an interested party?"
"He shall not do it. I forbid him to do it. If he takes in hand anything of the kind he must say good-by to me."
"You hear?" said John; "but I could not do it in any case, my dear Elinor. I am too near. I never could see this thing all round. Why not your lawyer, old Lynch, a decent old fellow----"
"I will tell him the same," cried Elinor; "I will never speak to him again."
"My dear," said her mother, "you will give everybody the idea that you don't want to know the truth."
"I know the truth already," said Elinor, rising with great dignity. "Do you think that any slander would for a moment shake my faith in you--or you? You don't deserve it, John, for you turn against me--you that I thought were going to take my part; but do you think if all the people in London set up one story that I would believe it against you? And how should I against _him_?" she added, with an emphasis upon the word, as expressing something immeasurably more to be loved and trusted than either mother or cousin, by which, after having raised John up to a sort of heaven of gratified affection, she let him down again to the ground like a stone. Oh, yes! trusted in with perfect faith, nothing believed against him, whom she had known all her life--but yet not to be mentioned in the same breath with the ineffable trust she reposed in the man she loved--whom she did not know at all. The first made John's countenance beam with emotion and pleasure, the second brought a cold shade over his face. For a moment he could scarcely speak.
"She bribes us," he said at last, forcing a smile. "She flatters us, but only to let us drop again, Mrs. Dennistoun; it is as good as saying, 'What are we to _him_?'"
"They all do so," said the elder lady, calmly; "I am used to it."
"But, perhaps, I am not quite--used to it," said John, with something in his voice which made them both look at him--Elinor only for a moment, carelessly, before she swept away--Mrs. Dennistoun with a more warmly awakened sensation, as if she had made some discovery. "Ah!" she said, with a tone of pain. But Elinor did not wait for any further disclosures. She waved her hand, and went off with her head high, carrying, as she felt, the honours of war. They might plot, indeed, behind her back, and try to invent some tribunal before which her future husband might be arraigned; but John, at least, would say nothing to make things worse. John would be true to her--he would not injure Phil Compton. Elinor, perhaps, guessed a little of what John was thinking, and felt, though she could scarcely have told how, that it would be a point of honour with him not to betray her love.