undation in fact; yet, all the same, the newly-suggested idea
burdened me. "I think you are mistaken," said I gently. "Nothing of
that kind could ever possibly happen."

"Not for years--not until I am dead," returned Mr. Raymond peevishly.
"It was nothing--nothing at all. All that occurred I will tell you,
since I was foolish enough to speak of it in the first instance. James
said he wanted Helen to be much with you. 'You know how those childish
intimacies end,' I replied to him--'in deep attachment and desire for
marriage.'--'I ask nothing better for Helen,' James exclaimed. 'She
will grow up like other girls, and love, and finally become a wife;
and if she became Floyd's wife I should have no fears for her.'" Mr.
Raymond's eyes met mine. "You will never tell Mr. Floyd I spoke of
this to you," he said under his breath. "I am not quite myself this
morning, or I should not have suggested a thought of it to you."

I was very sure that I should never mention it, for I found the idea
of my marrying Helen so painfully irksome that it went with me all the
day, casting a shadow across our intercourse. I told myself over and
over that the idea was absurd--that such a thing could never, never
come to pass. She was so mere a child. I studied her face with its
baby contours, where nothing showed the dawn of womanhood yet except
the great melancholy eyes; I took her hand in mine, where it lay like
a snowflake on my brown palm; and I laughed aloud at the grotesqueness
of the fancy that I should ever put a ring on that childish finger.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked me wonderingly.

"To think," I rejoined, "how funny it is to remember one day you will
be grown up and have rings upon your fingers."

"Is that funny?" she asked. "Of course, if I live I shall grow up and
be a woman. My mamma was married when she was only seventeen, and in
seven years I shall be seventeen." I dropped her hand as if it had
stung me. "I have all mamma's rings," she went on: "I have a drawerful
of trinkets that mamma used to wear. When Georgy Lenox comes I shall
give her a locket and a chain that are so very, very pretty they will
be just right for her. Tell me more about her, Floyd."

It was easy enough for me to grow eloquent in talking of Georgina, and
Helen was as anxious to hear as I to tell. The little girl had had few
friends of her own sex and age: every summer had brought the New
York and Boston Raymonds to The Headlands, and when the neighbori