, and the tree in the carpenter's yard."

She did not give these thoughts utterance. And they now entered the
garden.

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--anywhere. I must confess that Helen's first tidy womanlike
idea was a great desire to arrange the litter. "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 band 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 favour? 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 tha