"Leaving me!" said Helen, turning pale, and her clasp on his hand
tightening. Poor child, she felt mysteriously a sentiment of protection
in his presence.

"But at most for a day. My old tutor, of whom we have so often
conversed, is on his way to England,--perhaps even now in London. He has
some wrong impressions against your aunt; his manner is blunt and rough.
It is necessary that I should see him before he comes hither,--you know
how susceptible is your aunt's pride,--just to prepare him for meeting
her. You understand?"

"What impressions against my aunt? Does he even know her?" asked Helen.
And if such a sentiment as suspicion could cross that candid innocence of
mind, that sentiment towards this stern relation whose arms had never
embraced her, whose lips had never spoken of the past, whose history was
as a sealed volume, disturbed and disquieted her.

"It is because he has never known her that he does her wrong. Some old
story of her indiscretion as a girl, of her uncle's displeasure,--what
matters now?" said Percival, shrinking sensitively from one disclosure
that might wound Helen in her kinswoman. "Meanwhile, dearest, you will
be prudent,--you will avoid this damp air, and keep quietly at home, and
amuse yourself, sweet fancier of the future, in planning how to improve
these old halls when they and their unworthy master are your own. God
bless you, God guard you, Helen!"

He rose, and with that loyal chivalry of love which felt respect the more
for the careless guardianship to which his Helen was intrusted, he
refrained from that parting kiss which their pure courtship warranted,