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 entered the chamber precipitately, her face colourless, and her eyes starting from her head. Ellis !" she cried, "I must speak with you!"

She seated herself, made Ellis sit exactly opposite to her, and went on: "There are two things which I want to say to you; or, rather, to demand of you. Have you fortitude enough to tell truth, even though it should wound your self-love? and honour enough to be trusted with a commission a thousand times more important than life or death? and to execute it faithfully, — though at the risk of seeing the greatest idiot that ever existed, shew sufficient symptoms of sense to run mad?"

Alarmed by her ghastly look, and frightened at the abruptness of questions utterly incomprehensible, Ellis gently entreated to be spared any request with which she could not comply.

"I do not mean," cried Elinor, with quickness, "to make any call upon your confidence, or to put any fetters upon