and saw him
drop the key in his pocket. Then, presently, when coffee came on,
Helen and I went into the library, and left Mr. Raymond alone, with
his easy-chair turned toward the fire. I knew that something in the
house was wrong, and experienced a vague humiliation out of sympathy
for Helen, but what my fears were I did not name to myself.

"Promise me," said she, clasping my hand suddenly--"promise me to say
nothing to papa. Remember that grandpa is very old, and that he has
nothing in the world but me."

I gave the promise eagerly, more to avoid the subject than because I
understood as to what I was to be silent and why the subject should be
interdicted.

"You see," said she, her clear eyes meeting mine with their peculiarly
wistful, melancholy gaze, "this is why I cannot go away. Papa thinks I
do not love him: he does not know that it would not be safe for me to
leave grandpa all alone. If papa did know--"

"You ought to tell your papa everything," I said gravely.

"I wish I could," she cried in a trembling voice. "But I can't. He
would not let me stay here, and I could not go away. You must never
tell papa, Floyd--never!"

I said I would not tell with the air of one who never discloses a
secret; and she believed in me, and we were soon bright and happy
again, and wrote a letter to Georgy Lenox inviting her to The
Headlands on a visit.

With all his faults and weaknesses, I soon found there were good and
lovable traits in Mr. Raymond. He had been in early life a successful
merchant, and the habit of controlling widespread interests had given
him a broad and sympathetic insight into men and their ideas. He
possessed a graceful and comprehensive culture, and had embodied his
conceptions of the fitness of things in the arrangement of his home,
making it beautiful in all ways. He was an old man now, yet had not
lost the thirst for knowledge, and could talk, when inspiration was
upon him, generously and eloquently. He had been a part of the busy
great world; he understood society and social ways: all these talents
and acquirements made him a pleasant old gentleman when at his best,
but it needed only a touch of suspicion or jealousy to put him at his
worst. It was easy enough to see that Helen did not exaggerate when
she told me he had nothing to care for but herself; and his care for
her was so mixed with morbid fears that he was not first in her heart,
so embittered by a distrust of her love for her father, th