Page:Between Two Loves.djvu/157

152 We are both going to ruin about as fast as we can; only he tak's one way, and I tak' another."

"If ta knows thou art going to ruin, for God's sake stop, Jonathan."

"Nay, I'm in for t' fight. I'll hang on till t' last moment. Does ta think I'd back out of any fight? I'm not that kind."

"I wish ta was."

"Well, I am not."

But even the men in the thick of the battle are not to be half so much pitied as the women who sit at home, watching, watching, watching for some good coming, and weeping, because there is nothing comes but disappointment and despair. Of all the sufferers in this unhappy quarrel, Eleanor was the greatest. Certainly her father never said a word of reproach to her. But words are not the only form of speech. His gloomy, haggard face, his restlessness and silence, the gradual but constant retrenchments in the once splendidly generous household, taught her better than any lecture could have done some forcible lessons regarding wilful sin and its consequences.

The old home, which she had looked back so fondly to, had greatly changed. It was so,