Helen raised her face and strove to smile; but the tears stood in her eyes. “It would be hard to die now, Percival!” she said falteringly.
“To die—oh, Helen! No; we must not stay here longer,—the air is certainly too keen for you. Perhaps your aunt will go to Italy. Why not all go there, and seek my mother? And she will nurse you, Helen, and—and—” He could not trust his voice farther.
Helen pressed his arm tenderly. “Forgive me, dear Percival, it is but at moments that I feel so despondent; now, again, it is past. Ah, I so long to see your mother! When shall you hear from her? Are you not too sanguine? Do you really feel sure she will consent to so lowly a choice?”
“Never doubt her affection, her appreciation of you,” answered Percival, gladly, and hoping that Helen’s natural anxiety might be the latent cause of her dejected spirits; “often, when talking of the future, under these very cedars, my mother has said: ‘You have no cause to marry for ambition,—marry only for your happiness.’ She never had a daughter: in return for all her love, I shall give her that blessing.”
Thus talking, the lovers rambled on till the sun set, and then, returning to the house, they found that Varney and Madame Dalibard had preceded them. That evening Helen’s spirits rose to their natural buoyancy, and Percival’s heart was once more set at ease by her silvery laugh.
When, at their usual early hour, the rest of the family retired to sleep, Percival remained in the drawing-room to write again, and at length, to Lady Mary and Captain Greville. While thus engaged, his valet entered to say that Beck, who had been out since the early morning, in search of a horse that had strayed from one of the pastures, had just returned with the animal, who had wandered nearly as far as Southampton.
“I am glad to hear it,” said Percival, abstractedly, and continuing his letter.
The valet still lingered. Percival looked up in surprise. “If you please, sir, you said you particularly wished to see Beck when he came back.”
“I—oh, true! Tell him to wait; I will speak to him by and by. You need not sit up for me; let Beck attend to the bell.”
The valet withdrew. Percival continued his letter, and filled page after page and sheet after sheet; and when at length the letters, not containing a tithe of what he wished to convey, were brought to a close, he fell into a revery that lasted till the candles burned low, and the clock from the turret tolled one. Starting up in surprise at the lapse of time, Percival then, for the first time, remembered Beck, and rang the bell.