"Poor child!" cried Seymour kindly; "then let us go home directly; it grows late, and I believe you do not sit up to supper yet, Helen, except on great occasions."
Here was an affront. I angrily replied, "Indeed, Mr. Seymour Pendarves, you seem to know very little about me, and to care very little about me now."
"Mr., and a tossed-up chin, and a flushed face! Why, really, Helen, I find I did not know much about you: I took you for a sweet-tempered girl; but I have often thought you captious and pettish of late, and I never could imagine why; but let me tell you, Miss Helen Pendarves, that if you lose your good-temper, you will lose your greatest charm—any woman's greatest charm."
This reproach I could not bear from him; for I knew, if I was become pettish and captious, affection for him was the cause; and I burst into tears. But struggling with my feelings, I sobbed out, "And I suppose, sir, you think I have no other charm than my good-temper."
"I, Helen! No such thing: I think quite the contrary; and I do assure you, the ladies I have just left, they——"
"O yes!" cried I, "they, I suppose, have every charm possible."
"They have great charms, certainly, both of face and person; still, they are only fine women; but you, Helen, are quite a little beauty—only you are as yet but a child, you know."
Away went my ill-humours, and even my jealousy; for I was sure, though the boy of seventeen thought it more manly to talk to women grown, I knew as he advanced in life, and I too, he would be of a different opinion; and I also knew a few years would fade the ladies whom he so much admired, while the same number of years would leave me still young, and still a beauty. Yes, he thought me a beauty, and he had told me so; and I repeated his words to myself so often, that in a reverie I once spoke them aloud, and my mother asked, "Child, what are you saying about Helen and beauty?"
"Helen was a great beauty, mamma—was she not?" said I, blushing at my own duplicity; but the subterfuge weighed heavily on my mind, nor could I rest till I told the whole truth to my mother, who, in consideration of my ingenuousness, merely observed to me, that when, from the exaggeration to which even boys were much given, Seymour called me a beauty, he only meant I was a pretty girl: but I thought differently.
Seymour now remained at home full six months, with a private tutor, as he was too old to go back to school, and Lady Helen thought him too young for Oxford. During that time, my mother, from (as I suspected) some private information, began to form an unfavourable opinion of his steadiness of conduct; and the anxieties of a mother for his future well-being clouded the still beautiful countenance of Lady Helen.