me that he loved me. He told me that he was unhappy, alone; that in me,
and only in me, he could find a comforter, a soother--He, he! And I had
just arrived in England, was under his mother's roof, had not then once
more seen you; and--and--what could I answer? Strengthen me, strengthen
me, you whom I look up to and revere. Yes, yes, you are right. We must
see each other no more. I am betrothed to another,--to him! Strengthen
me!"

All the inherent nobleness of the poet's nature rose at once at this
appeal.

"Oh, Helen--sister--Miss Digby, forgive me. You need no strength from
me; I borrow it from you. I comprehend you, I respect. Banish all
thought of me. Repay our common benefactor. Be what he asks of you,--his
comforter, his soother; be more,--his pride and his joy. Happiness will
come to you, as it comes to those who confer happiness and forget self.
God comfort you in the passing struggle; God bless you, in the long
years to come. Sister, I accept the holy name now, and will claim it
hereafter, when I too can think more of others than myself."

Helen had covered her face with her hands, sobbing; but with that soft,
womanly constraint which presses woe back into the heart. A strange
sense of utter solitude suddenly pervaded her whole being, and by that
sense of solitude she knew that he was gone.

CHAPTER XIV.

In another room in that same house sat, solitary as Helen, a stern,
gloomy, brooding man, in whom they who had best known him from his
childhood could scarcely have recognized a trace of the humane,
benignant, trustful, but wayward and varying Harley, Lord L'Estrange.

He had read that fragment of a memoir, in which, out of all the chasms
of his barren and melancholy past, there rose two malignant truths that
seemed literally to glare upon him with mocking and demon eyes. The
woman whose remembrance had darkened all the sunshine of his life had
loved another; the friend in whom he had confided his whole affectionate
loyal soul had been his perfidious rival. He had read from the first
word to the last, as if under a spell that held him breathless; and when
he closed the manuscript, it was without a groan or sigh; but over his
pale lips there passed that withering smile, which is as sure an index
of a heart overcharged with dire and fearful passions, as the arrowy
flash of the lightning is of the tempests that are gathered within the
cloud.

He then thrust the papers into his bosom, and, keeping