forfeit his esteem; we will both do our best to repay him! Will we not?
--say so!"

Leonard felt overpowered by contending and unanalyzed emotions. Touched
almost to tears by the affectionate address, thrilled by the hand that
pressed his own, and yet with a vague fear, a consciousness that
something more than the words themselves was implied,--something that
checked all hope. And this word "brother," once so precious and so dear,
why did he shrink from it now; why could he not too say the sweet word
"sister"?

"She is above me now and evermore!" he thought mournfully; and the tones
of his voice, when he spoke again, were changed. The appeal to renewed
intimacy but made him more distant, and to that appeal itself he made no
direct answer; for Mrs. Riccabocca, now turning round, and pointing to
the cottage which came in view, with its picturesque gable-ends, cried
out,

"But is that your house, Leonard? I never saw anything so pretty."

"You do not remember it then," said Leonard to Helen, in accents of
melancholy reproach,--"there where I saw you last? I doubted whether to
keep it exactly as it was, and I said, '--No! the association is not
changed because we try to surround it with whatever beauty we can create;
the dearer the association, the more the Beautiful becomes to it
natural.' Perhaps you don't understand this,--perhaps it is only we poor
poets who do."

"I understand it," said Helen, gently. She looked wistfully at the
cottage.