Part 25 (2/2)

CHAPTER IV.

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 bliss 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--any where. I must confess that Helen's first tidy woman-like idea was a great desire to arrange the latter. ”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 favor? 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 candor 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 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 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 visitors, and began making excuses for inattention to Miss Digby, whose ident.i.ty 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 any thing 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,” said she 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. Riccobocca, and, in the walk back, it seemed to Leonard as if the winter had resettled in the sky.

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