THE ROSE BENEATH THE UPAS.

And from that day Percival had his privileged entry into Madame
Dalibard's house. The little narrative of the circumstances connected
with his first meeting with Helen, partly drawn from Percival, partly
afterwards from Helen (with blushing and faltered excuses from the latter
for not having mentioned before an incident that might, perhaps
needlessly, vex or alarm her aunt in so delicate a state of health), was
received by Lucretia with rare graciousness. The connection, not only
between herself and Percival, but between Percival and Helen, was allowed
and even dwelt upon by Madame Dalibard as a natural reason for permitting
the artless intimacy which immediately sprang up between these young
persons. She permitted Percival to call daily, to remain for hours, to
share in their simple meals, to wander alone with Helen in the garden,
assist her to bind up the ragged flowers, and sit by her in the old ivy-
grown arbour when their work was done. She affected to look upon them
both as children, and to leave to them that happy familiarity which
childhood only sanctions, and compared to which the affection of maturer
years seems at once coarse and cold.

As they grew more familiar, the differences and similarities in their
characters came out, and nothing more delightful than the harmony into
which even the contrasts blended ever invited the guardian angel to pause
and smile. As flowers in some trained parterre relieve each other, now
softening, now heightening, each several hue, till all unite in one
concord of interwoven beauty, so these two blooming natures, brought
together, seemed, where varying still, to melt and fuse their affluences
into one wealth of innocence and sweetness. Both had a native buoyancy
and cheerfulness of spirit, a noble trustfulness in others, a singular
candour and freshness of mind and feeling. But beneath the gayety of