Tales and Novels — Volume 10 / Helen

CONTENTS



“There is Helen in the lime-walk,” said Mrs. Collingwood to her husband, as she looked out of the window. The slight figure of a young person in deep mourning appeared between the trees,—“How slowly she walks! She looks very unhappy!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Collingwood, with a sigh, “she is young to know sorrow, and to struggle with difficulties to which she is quite unsuited both by nature and by education, difficulties which no one could ever have foreseen. How changed are all her prospects!”
“Changed indeed!” said Mrs. Collingwood, “pretty young creature!—Do you recollect how gay she was when first we came to Cecilhurst? and even last year, when she had hopes of her uncle’s recovery, and when he talked of taking her to London, how she enjoyed the thoughts of going there! The world was bright before her then. How cruel of that uncle, with all his fondness for her, never to think what was to become of her the moment he was dead: to breed her up as an heiress, and leave her a beggar!”
“But what is to be done, my dear?” said her husband.
“I am sure I do not know; I can only feel for her, you must think for her.”
“Then I think I must tell her directly of the state in which her uncle’s affairs are left, and that there is no provision for her.”
“Not yet, my dear,” said Mrs. Collingwood: “I don’t mean about there being no provision for herself, that would not strike her, but her uncle’s debts,—there is the point: she would feel dreadfully the disgrace to his memory—she loved him so tenderly!”
“Yet it must be told,” said Mr. Collingwood, resolutely “and perhaps it will be better now; she will feel it less, while her mind is absorbed by grief for him.”