ed into flower. Take it to thy breast.' And myself replied
to myself, meekly, 'So be it.' Then I found that Lady N-----, with her
daughters, was coming to England. I asked her Ladyship to take my
ward to your house. I wrote to you, and prayed your assent; and, that
granted, I knew you would obtain my father's. Iam here,--you give me the
approval I sought for. I will speak to Helen to-morrow. Perhaps, after
all, she may reject me."

"Strange, strange! you speak thus coldly, thus lightly, you, so capable
of ardent love!"

"Mother," said Harley, earnestly, "be satisfied! I am! Love as of old, I
feel, alas! too well, can visit me never more. But gentle companionship,
tender friendship, the relief and the sunlight of woman's smile,
hereafter the voices of children,--music that, striking on the hearts
of both parents, wakens the most lasting and the purest of all
sympathies,--these are my hope. Is the hope so mean, my fond mother?"

Again the countess wept, and her tears were not dried when she left the
room.

CHAPTER VIII.

Oh, Helen, fair Helen,--type of the quiet, serene, unnoticed, deep-felt
excellence of woman! Woman, less as the ideal that a poet conjures from
the air, than as the companion of a poet on the earth! Woman, who, with
her clear sunny vision of things actual, and the exquisite fibre of her
delicate sense, supplies the deficiencies of him whose foot stumbles
on the soil, because his eye is too intent upon the stars! Woman, the
provident, the comforting, angel whose pinions are folded round the
heart, guarding there a divine spring unmarred by the winter of the
world! Helen, soft Helen, is it indeed in thee that the wild and
brilliant "lord of wantonness and ease" is to find the regeneration
of his life, the rebaptism of his soul? Of what avail thy meek prudent
household virtues to one whom Fortune screens from rough trial; whose
sorrows lie remote from thy ken; whose spirit, erratic and perturbed,
now rising, now falling, needs a vision more subtle than thine to
pursue, and a strength that can sustain the reason, when it droops, on
the wings of enthusiasm and passion?

And thou, thyself, O nature, shrinking and humble, that needest to be
courted forth from the shelter, and developed under the calm and genial
atmosphere of holy, happy love--can such affection as Harley L'Estrange
may proffer suffice to thee? Will not the blossoms, yet folded in the
petal, wither away beneath the shade that may pro