ise and vexation
learned that she had quitted the house before L'Estrange arrived.

He came back, perplexed how to explain what seemed ungracious and
ungrateful, and spoke with hesitating lip and flushed cheek of the
widow's natural timidity and sense of her own homely station. "And so
overpowered is she," added Leonard, "by the recollection of all that we
owe to you, that she never hears your name without agitation or tears,
and trembled like a leaf at the thought of seeing you."

"Ha!" said Harley, with visible emotion. "Is it so?" And he bent down,
shading his face with his hand. "And," he renewed, after a pause, but
not looking up--"and you ascribe this fear of seeing me, this agitation
at my name, solely to an exaggerated sense of--of the circumstances
attending my acquaintance with yourself?"

"And, perhaps, to a sort of shame that the mother of one you have made
her proud of is but a peasant."

"That is all?" said Harley, earnestly, now looking up and fixing eyes in
which stood tears upon Leonard's ingenuous brow.

"Oh, my dear Lord, what else can it be? Do not judge her harshly."

L'Estrange arose abruptly, pressed Leonard's hand, muttered something
not audible, and then drawing his young friend's arm in his, led him
into the garden, and turned the conversation back to its former topics.

Leonard's heart yearned to ask after Helen, and yet something withheld
him from doing so, till, seeing Harley did not volunteer to speak of
her, he could not resist his impulse. "And Helen--Miss Digby--is she
much changed?"

"Changed, no--yes; very much."

"Very much!" Leonard sighed.

"I shall see her again?"

"Certainly," said Harley, in a tone of surprise. "How can you doubt it?
And I reserve to you the pleasure of saying that you are renowned.
You blush; well, I will say that for you. But you shall give her your
books."

"She has not yet read them, then?--not the last? The first was not
worthy of her attention," said Leonard, disappointed. "She has only just
arrived in England; and, though your books reached me in Germany, she
was not then with me. When I have settled some business that will take
me from town, I shall present you to her and my mother." There was a
certain embarrassment in Harley's voice as he spoke; and, turning round
abruptly, he exclaimed, "But you have shown poetry even here. I could
not have conceived that so much beauty could be drawn from what appeared
to me the most commonplace of all