step-mother, led many to expect, now
that the boy was no more, that Mrs. Postlethwaite would proceed to
acknowledge the little Helena as her heir, and give her that place in
the household to which her natural claims entitled her.

But no such result followed. The passion of grief into which the
mother was thrown by the shipwreck of all her hopes left her hard and
implacable, and when, as very soon happened, she fell a victim to the
disease which tied her to her chair and made the wealth which had come
to her by such a peculiar ordering of circumstances little else than a
mockery even in her own eyes, it was upon this child she expended the
full fund of her secret bitterness.

And the child? What of her? How did she bear her unhappy fate when she
grew old enough to realize it? With a resignation which was the wonder
of all who knew her. No murmurs escaped her lips, nor was the devotion
she invariably displayed to the exacting invalid who ruled her as well
as all the rest of her household with a rod of iron ever disturbed by
the least sign of reproach. Though the riches, which in those early days
poured into the home in a measure far beyond the needs of its mistress,
were expended in making the house beautiful rather than in making the
one young life within it happy, she never was heard to utter so much as
a wish to leave the walls within which fate had immured her. Content,
or seemingly content, with the only home she knew, she never asked
for change or demanded friends or amusements. Visitors ceased coming;
desolation followed neglect. The garden, once a glory, succumbed to a
riot of weeds and undesirable brush, till a towering wall seemed to be
drawn about the house cutting it off from the activities of the world as
it cut it off from the approach of sunshine by day, and the comfort of
a star-lit heaven by night. And yet the young girl continued to smile,
though with a pitifulness of late, which some thought betokened
secret terror and others the wasting of a body too sensitive for such
unwholesome seclusion.

These were the facts, known if not consciously specialized, which gave
to the latter part of my interview with Mrs. Postlethwaite a poignancy
of interest which had never attended any of my former experiences. The
peculiar attitude of Miss Postlethwaite towards her indurate tormentor
awakened in my agitated mind something much deeper than curiosity,
but when I strove to speak her name with the intent of inquiri