Mrs Fairfield was a proud woman when she received Mrs Riccabocca
and Violante in her grand house; for a grand house to her was that
cottage to which her boy Lenny had brought her home. Proud, indeed,
ever was Widow Fairfield; but she thought then in her secret heart,
that if ever she could receive in the drawing-room of that grand
house the great Mrs Hazeldean, who had so lectured her for refusing
to live any longer in the humble tenement rented of the Squire, the
cup of human bless would be filled, and she could contentedly die of
the pride of it. She did not much notice Helen--her attention was
too absorbed by the ladies who renewed their old acquaintance with
her, and she carried them all over the house, yea, into the very
kitchen; and so, somehow or other, there was a short time when Helen
and Leonard found themselves alone. It was in the study. Helen had
unconsciously seated herself in Leonard's own chair, and she was
gazing with anxious and wistful interest on the scattered papers,
looking so disorderly (though, in truth, in that disorder there was
method, but method only known to the owner,) and at the venerable
well-worn books, in all languages, lying on the floor, on the
chairs--anywhere. I must confess that Helen's first tidy womanlike
idea was a great desire to arrange the litter. "Poor Leonard," she
thought to herself--"the rest of the house so neat, but no one to
take care of his own room and of him!"
As if he divined her thought, Leonard smiled, and said, "It would be
a cruel kindness to the spider, if the gentlest hand in the world
tried to set its cobweb to rights."
HELEN.--"You were not quite so bad in the old days."
LEONARD.--"Yet even then, you were obliged to take care of the
money. I have more books now, and more money. My present housekeeper
lets me take care of the books, but she is less indulgent as to the
money."
HELEN, (archly.)--"Are you as absent as ever?"
LEONARD.--"Much more so, I fear. The habit is incorrigible. Miss
Digby--"
HELEN.--"Not Miss Digby--sister, if you like."
LEONARD, (evading the word that implied so forbidden an
affinity.)--"Helen, will you grant me a favour? Your eyes and your
smile say 'yes.' Will you lay aside, for one minute, your shawl
and bonnet? What! can you be surprised that I ask it? Can you not
understand that I wish for one minute to think you are at home again
under this roof?"
Helen cast down her eyes, and seemed troubled; then she raised them,
with a soft angelic candour in their dovelike blue, and, as if in
shelter from all thoughts of more warm affection, again murmured
"_brother_," and did as he asked her.
So there she sate, 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 for ever! 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 visiters, 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."
Helen now appropriated Mrs Riccabocca's arm; and, after a
kind leave-taking with the widow, the ladies returned towards
Riccabocca's house.
Mrs Fairfield, however, ran after them with Leonard's hat and
gloves, which he had forgotten.
"'Deed, boy," she said kindly, yet scoldingly, "but there'd
be no more fine books, if the Lord had not fixed your head on
your shoulders. You would not think it, marm," she added to Mrs
Riccabocca, "but sin' he has left you, he's not the 'cute lad he
was; very helpless at times, marm!"
Helen could not resist turning round, and looking at Leonard, with a
sly smile.
The widow saw the smile, and catching Leonard by the arm, whispered,
"But, where before have you seen that pretty young lady? Old
friends!"
"Ah, mother," said Leonard sadly, "it is a long tale; you have heard
the beginning, who can guess the end?"--and he escaped. But Helen
still leant on the arm of Mrs Riccabocca, and, in the walk back, it
seemed to Leonard as if the winter had resettled in the sky.
Yet he was by the side of Violante, and she spoke to him with such
praise, of Helen! Alas! it is not always so sweet as folks say, to
hear the praises of one we love. Sometimes those praises seem to ask
ironically, "And what right hast thou to hope because thou lovest?
_All_ love _her_."