ough the sullen darkness
of his present disposition, he continually manifested towards both her
child and herself, a discontented and peevish sternness, which wounded
her deeply, and filled her with inquietude. She retained, however,
too deep a veneration for her husband, too strong a sense of his
superiority, to permit her to resent, by the most trifling show of
displeasure, the alteration in his conduct. She forbore to indulge even
in the

"Silence that chides, and woundings of the eye."

Helen's was no common character. Young, gentle, timid as she was, the
texture of her mind was framed of "sterner stuff;" and she nourished an
intensity of wife-like devotion and endurance, which no unkindness could
tire, and a fixedness of resolve, and high sense of moral rectitude,
which no meaner feeling had yet obtained the power to blemish.

"Let him be as cold and stern as he will," said she to herself in
her patient affliction, "he is my husband--the husband of my free
choice--and by that I must abide. He may have crosses and sorrows of
which I know not; and is it fitting that I should pry into the secrets
of a mind devoted to pursuits and studies in which I am incapable of
sharing? There was a time when I fondly trusted he would seek to qualify
me for his companion and friend; but the enchantment which sealed my
eyes is over, and I must meet the common fate of woman, distrust and
neglect, as best I may."

Anxious to escape the observation of her family, she earnestly requested
Lord Greville's permission to accompany him with her son, when he
suddenly announced his intention of visiting Greville Cross. Her
petition was at first met with a cold negative; but when she ventured to
plead the advice she had received recently from several physicians,
to remove to the sea coast, and reminded him of her frequent
indispositions, and present feebleness of constitution, he looked at her
for a time with astonishment at the circumstance of her thus exhibiting
so unusual an opposition to his will, and afterwards with sincere and
evident distress at the confirmation borne by her faded countenance to
the truth of her representation.

"Thou art so patient a sufferer," he replied "that I am somewhat too
prone to forget the weakness of thy frame--but be content--I must be
alone in this long and tedious journey."

The tears which rose in her eyes were her only remonstrance, and her
husband stood regarding her for some minutes in silence,