all thoughts of more warm affection, again murmured "brother," and did as
he asked her.

So there she sat, amongst the dull books, by his table, near the open
window, her fair hair parted on her forehead, looking so good, so calm,
so happy! Leonard wondered at his own self-command. His heart yearned
to her with such inexpressible love, his lips so longed to murmur, "Ah,
as now so could it be forever! Is the home too mean?" But that word
"brother" was as a talisman between her and him. Yet she looked so at
home--perhaps so at home she felt!---more certainly than she had yet
learned to do in that stiff stately house in which she was soon to have a
daughter's rights. Was she suddenly made aware of this, that she so
suddenly arose, and with a look of alarm and distress on her face.

"But--we are keeping Lady Lansmere too long," she said falteringly. "We
must go now," and she hastily took up her shawl and bonnet.

Just then Mrs. Fairfield entered with the visitors, and began making
excuses for inattention to Miss Digby, whose identity with Leonard's
child-angel she had not yet learned.

Helen received these apologies with her usual sweetness. "Nay," she
said, "your son and I are such old friends, how could you stand on
ceremony with me?"

"Old friends!" Mrs. Fairfield stared amazed, and then surveyed the fair
speaker more curiously than she had yet done. "Pretty, nice-spoken
thing," thought the widow; "as nice-spoken as Miss Violante, and humbler-
looking like,--though, as to dress, I never see anything so elegant out
of a picter."