less credulous hearts. From the first entry of Helen under her roof she
had been formal and measured in her welcome,--kept her, as it were,
aloof, and affected no prodigal superfluity of dissimulation; but she had
never been positively harsh or unkind in word or in deed, and had coldly
excused herself for the repulsiveness of her manner.

"I am irritable," she said, "from long suffering, I am unsocial from
habitual solitude; do not expect from me the fondness and warmth that
should belong to our relationship. Do not harass yourself with vain
solicitude for one whom all seeming attention but reminds more painfully
of infirmity, and who, even thus stricken down, would be independent of
all cares not bought and paid for. Be satisfied to live here in all
reasonable liberty, to follow your own habits and caprices uncontrolled.
Regard me but as a piece of necessary furniture. You can never displease
me but when you notice that I live and suffer."

If Helen wept bitterly at these hard words when first spoken, it was not
with anger that her loving heart was so thrown back upon herself. On the
contrary, she became inspired with a compassion so great that it took the
character of reverence. She regarded this very coldness as a mournful
dignity. She felt grateful that one who could thus dispense with, should
yet have sought her. She had heard her mother say that she had been
under great obligations to Lucretia; and now, when she was forbidden to
repay them even by a kiss on those weary eyelids, a daughter's hand to
that sleepless pillow; when she saw that the barrier first imposed was
irremovable, that no time diminished the distance her aunt set between
them, that the least approach to the tenderness of service beyond the
most casual offices really seemed but to fret those excitable nerves, and
fever the hand that she ventured timorously to clasp,--she retreated into
herself with a sad amaze that increased her pity and heightened her