eal difference in the heart of either girl was this, that
Helen felt awe of Lady Lansmere, and Violante felt only love for Lord
L'Estrange's mother. Violante, too, was one of those persons whom a
reserved and formal person, like the countess, "can get on with," as the
phrase goes. Not so poor little Helen,--so shy herself, and so hard to
coax into more than gentle monosyllables. And Lady Lansmere's favourite
talk was always of Harley. Helen had listened to such talk with respect
and interest. Violante listened to it with inquisitive eagerness, with
blushing delight. The mother's heart noticed the distinction between the
two, and no wonder that that heart moved more to Violante than to Helen.
Lord Lansmere, too, like most gentlemen of his age, clumped all young
ladies together as a harmless, amiable, but singularly stupid class of
the genus-Petticoat, meant to look pretty, play the piano, and talk
to each other about frocks and sweethearts. Therefore this animated,
dazzling creature, with her infinite variety of look and play of mind,
took him by surprise, charmed him into attention, and warmed him
into gallantry. Helen sat in her quiet corner, at her work, sometimes
listening with almost mournful, though certainly unenvious, admiration
at Violante's vivid, yet ever unconscious, eloquence of word and
thought, sometimes plunged deep into her own secret meditations. And all
the while the work went on the same, under the small, noiseless fingers.
This was one of Helen's habits that irritated the nerves of Lady
Lansmere. She despised young ladies who were fond of work. She did not
comprehend how often it is the resource of the sweet womanly mind, not
from want of thought, but from the silence and the depth of it. Violante
was surprised, and perhaps disappointed, that Harley had left the house
before dinner, and did not return all the evening. But Lady Lansmere, in
making excuse for his absence, on the plea of engagements, found so good
an opportunity to talk of his ways in general,--of his rare promise in
boyhood, of her regret at the inaction of his maturity, of her hope
to see him yet do justice to his natural powers,--that Violante almost
ceased to miss him.

And when Lady Lansmere conducted her to her room, and, kissing her cheek
tenderly, said, "But you are just the person Harley admires,--just the
person to rouse him from melancholy dreams, of which his wild humours
are now but the vain disguise"--Violante crossed her a