her," said Helbeck. "Since that evening when you denounced me for selling
her--little termagant!--I have racked my brains to keep her."

And now for some time there had been negotiations going on between
Helbeck and a land agent in Whinthorpe for the sale of an outlying piece
of Bannisdale land, to which the growth of a little watering-place on the
estuary had given of late a new value. Helbeck, in general a singularly
absent and ineffective man of business, had thrown himself into the
matter with an astonishing energy, had pressed his price, hurried his
solicitors, and begged the patience of the nuns--who were still sleeping
in doorways and praying for new buildings--till all should be complete.

That afternoon he had ridden over to Whinthorpe in the hopes of signing
the contract. He did not yet know--so Laura gathered--with whom he was
really treating. The Whinthorpe agent had talked vaguely of "a Manchester
gentleman," and Helbeck had not troubled himself to inquire further.

When they were married, would he still sell all that he had, and give to
the poor--in the shape of orphanages and reformatories? Laura was almost
as unpractical, and cared quite as little about money, as he. But her
heart yearned towards the old house; and she already dreamt of making it
beautiful and habitable again. As a woman, too, she was more alive to the
habitual discomforts of the household than Helbeck himself. Mrs. Denton
at least should go! So much he had already promised her. The girl thought
with joy of that dismissal, tightening her small lips. Oh! the tyranny of
those perpetual grumblings and parsimonies, of those sour unfriendly
looks! Economy--yes! But it should be a seemly, a smiling economy in
future--one still compatible with a little elegance, a little dignity.

Laura liked to think of her own three hundred a year; liked to feel it of