It seemed, as Percival spoke and looked, as if boyhood were cast from him
forever. The unusual weight and gravity of his words, to which his tone
gave even eloquence; the steady flash of his dark eyes; his erect,
elastic form,--all had the dignity of man. Helen gazed on him silently,
and with a heart so full that words would not come, and tears overflowed
instead.

That sight sobered him at once; he knelt down beside her, threw his arms
around her,--it was his first embrace,--and kissed the tears away.

"How have I distressed you? Why do you weep?"

"Let me weep on, Percival, dear Percival! These tears are like prayers,-
-they speak to Heaven--and of you!"

A step came noiselessly over the grass, and between the lovers and the
sunlight stood Gabriel Varney.




CHAPTER XII.

SUDDEN CELEBRITY AND PATIENT HOPE.

Percival was unusually gloomy and abstracted in his way to town that day,
though Varney was his companion, and in the full play of those animal
spirits which he owed to his unrivalled physical organization and the
obtuseness of his conscience. Seeing, at length, that his gayety did not