t her there, and allow her to take her back with her
into Lincolnshire to spend some time with her and her daughters. Mr.
Woodbourne, knowing that his wife had esteemed her very highly,
complied after a little deliberation. Helen's visit had lasted longer
than at first proposed, and she only returned home, after an absence of
five months, just in time to wish her little brother farewell, on his
departure for school, a few weeks before the Consecration of St.
Austin's. Lady Merton would have been glad to read Mrs. Woodbourne all
the admiration of Helen, which Mrs. Staunton had poured forth to her in
a letter written a short time before; but the terms in which it was
expressed were more exaggerated than Lady Merton liked to shew to one
who was not acquainted with Mrs. Staunton, and besides, her praise of
Helen was full of comparison with her mother.

Visiting Abbeychurch was always painful to Lady Merton, and her manner,
usually rather cold, was still more constrained when she was there;
for, although both she and Sir Edward had been very careful not to shew
any want of cordiality towards Mr. and Mrs. Woodbourne, they could not
but feel that the Vicarage never could be to them what it once had
been. It was certainly quite impossible not to have an affection for
its present gentle kind-hearted mistress; and Lady Merton felt
exceedingly grateful to her, for having, some years ago, nursed Rupert
through a dangerous attack of scarlet-fever, with which he had been
seized at Abbeychurch, when on his way from school, when she herself
had been prevented by illness from coming to him; and Mrs. Woodbourne,
making light of her anxiety for her own children, had done all that the
most affectionate mother could have done for him, and had shewn more
energy than almost anyone had believed her to possess, comforting Sir
Edward with hopes and cheerful looks, soothing the boy's waywardness,
and bearing with his fretfulness in his recovery, as none but a mother,
or a friend as gentle as Mrs. Woodbourne, could have done. Still, much
as she loved Mrs. Woodbourne for her own sake, Lady Merton could not
help missing Katherine, her first play-fellow, the bright friend of her
youth, her sister-in-law; Mrs. Woodbourne, a shy timid person, many
years younger, felt that such must be the case, and always feared that
she was thinking that the girls would have been in better order under
their own mother; so that the two ladies were never quite at the