as he talked, would now and then flit like ripples over his
forehead; but Helen's eyes seldom did more than slip over the faces
presented to her; and had it been otherwise, who could be expected
to pay much regard to Thomas Wingfold when George Bascombe was
present? There, indeed, stood a man by the corner of the
mantelpiece!--tall and handsome as an Apollo, and strong as the
young Hercules, dressed in the top of the plainest fashion,
self-satisfied, but not offensively so, good-natured, ready to
smile, as clean in conscience, apparently, and as large in sympathy,
as his shirt-front. Everybody who knew him, counted George Bascombe
a genuine good fellow, and George himself knew little to the
contrary, while Helen knew nothing.

One who had only chanced to get a glimpse of her in her own room, as
in imagination my reader has done, would hardly have recognised her
again in the drawing-room. For in her own room she was but as she
appeared to herself in her mirror--dull, inanimate; but in the
drawing-room her reflection from living eyes and presences served to
stir up what waking life was in her. When she spoke, her face dawned
with a clear, although not warm light; and although it must be owned
that when it was at rest, the same over-stillness, amounting almost
to dulness, the same seeming immobility, ruled as before, yet, even
when she was not speaking, the rest was often broken by a smile--a
genuine one, for although there was much that was stiff, there was
nothing artificial about Helen. Neither was there much of the
artificial about her cousin; for his good-nature, and his smile, and
whatever else appeared upon him, were all genuine enough--the only
thing in this respect not quite satisfactory to the morally
fastidious man being his tone in speaking. Whether he had caught it
at the university, or amongst his father's clerical friends, or in