with food not potent enough for the nurture of the ideal--with this
difference, however, that the cramped and stinted thing comes out,
if no queen, then a working bee, and Helen, who might be both, was
neither yet. If I were at liberty to mention the books on her table,
it would give a few of my readers no small help towards the settling
of her position in the "valued file" of the young women of her
generation; but there are reasons against it.

She was the daughter of an officer, who, her mother dying when she
was born, committed her to the care of a widowed aunt, and almost
immediately left for India, where he rose to high rank, and somehow
or other amassed a considerable fortune, partly through his marriage
with a Hindoo lady, by whom he had one child, a boy some three years
younger than Helen. When he died, he left his fortune equally
divided between the two children.

Helen was now three-and-twenty, and her own mistress. Her appearance
suggested Norwegian blood, for she was tall, blue-eyed, and
dark-haired--but fair-skinned, with regular features, and an over
still-some who did not like her said hard--expression of
countenance. No one had ever called her NELLY; yet she had long
remained a girl, lingering on the broken borderland after several of
her school companions had become young matrons. Her drawing-master,
a man of some observation and insight, used to say Miss Lingard
would wake up somewhere about forty.

The cause of her so nearly touching the borders of thought this
afternoon, was, that she became suddenly aware of feeling bored. Now
Helen was even seldomer bored than merry, and this time she saw no
reason for it, neither had any person to lay the blame upon. She