of Harley. Helen had listened to such talk with respect and interest.
Violante listened to it with inquisitive eagerness, with blushing
delight. The mother's heart noticed the distinction between the two, and
no wonder that that heart moved more to Violante than to Helen. Lord
Lansmere, too, like most gentlemen of his age, clumped all young ladies
together as a harmless, amiable, but singularly stupid class of the
genus-Petticoat, meant to look pretty, play the piano, and talk to each
other about frocks and sweethearts. Therefore this animated, dazzling
creature, with her infinite variety of look and play of mind, took him by
surprise, charmed him into attention, and warmed him into gallantry.
Helen sat in her quiet corner, at her work, sometimes listening with
almost mournful, though certainly unenvious, admiration at Violante's
vivid, yet ever unconscious, eloquence of word and thought, sometimes
plunged deep into her own secret meditations. And all the while the work
went on the same, under the small, noiseless fingers. This was one of
Helen's habits that irritated the nerves of Lady Lansmere. She despised
young ladies who were fond of work. She did not comprehend how often it
is the resource of the sweet womanly mind, not from want of thought, but
from the silence and the depth of it. Violante was surprised, and
perhaps disappointed, that Harley had left the house before dinner, and
did not return all the evening. But Lady Lansmere, in making excuse for
his absence, on the plea of engagements, found so good an opportunity to
talk of his ways in general,--of his rare promise in boyhood, of her
regret at the inaction of his maturity, of her hope to see him yet do
justice to his natural powers,--that Violante almost ceased to miss him.

And when Lady Lansmere conducted her to her room, and, kissing her cheek
tenderly, said, "But you are just the person Harley admires,--just the
person to rouse him from melancholy dreams, of which his wild humours are
now but the vain disguise"--Violante crossed her arms on her bosom, and