“I cannot guess why it is, Percival, but I am startled at the change I feel in myself—no, not in health, dear Percival; I mean in mind—during the last few months,—since, indeed, we have known each other. I remember so well the morning in which my aunt’s letter arrived at the dear vicarage. We were returning from the village fair, and my good guardian was smiling at my notions of the world. I was then so giddy and light and thoughtless, everything presented itself to me in such gay colours, I scarcely believed in sorrow. And now I feel as if I were awakened to a truer sense of nature,—of the ends of our being here; I seem to know that life is a grave and solemn thing. Yet I am not less happy, Percival. No, I think rather that I knew not true happiness till I knew you. I have read somewhere that the slave is gay in his holiday from toil; if you free him, if you educate him, the gayety vanishes, and he cares no more for the dance under the palm-tree. But is he less happy? So it is with me!”
“My sweet Helen, I would rather have one gay smile of old, the arch, careless laugh which came so naturally from those rosy lips, than hear you talk of happiness with that quiver in your voice,—those tears in your eyes.”
“Yet gayety,” said Helen, thoughtfully, and in the strain of her pure, truthful poetry of soul, “is only the light impression of the present moment,—the play of the mere spirits; and happiness seems a forethought of the future, spreading on, far and broad, over all time and space.”
“And you live, then, in the future at last; you have no misgivings now, my Helen? Well, that comforts me. Say it, Helen,—say the future will be ours!”
“It will, it will,—forever and forever,” said Helen, earnestly; and her eyes involuntarily rested on the Cross.
In his younger spirit and less imaginative nature Percival did not comprehend the depth of sadness implied in Helen’s answer; taking it literally, he felt as if a load were lifted from his heart, and kissing with rapture the hand he held, he exclaimed: “Yes, this shall soon, oh, soon be mine! I fear nothing while you hope. You cannot guess how those words have cheered me; for I am leaving you, though but for a few hours, and I shall repeat those words, for they will ring in my ear, in my heart, till we meet again.”
“Leaving me!” said Helen, turning pale, and her clasp on his hand tightening. Poor child, she felt mysteriously a sentiment of protection in his presence.
“But at most for a day. My old tutor, of whom we have so often conversed, is on his way to England,—perhaps even now in London. He has some wrong impressions against your aunt; his manner is blunt and rough. It is necessary that I should see him before he comes hither,—you know how susceptible is your aunt’s pride,—just to prepare him for meeting her. You understand?”
“What impressions against my aunt? Does he even know her?” asked Helen. And if such a sentiment as suspicion could cross that candid innocence of mind, that sentiment towards this stern relation whose arms had never embraced her, whose lips had never spoken of the past, whose history was as a sealed volume, disturbed and disquieted her.
“It is because he has never known her that he does her wrong. Some old story of her indiscretion as a girl, of her uncle’s displeasure,—what matters now?” said Percival, shrinking sensitively from one disclosure that might wound Helen in her kinswoman. “Meanwhile, dearest, you will be prudent,—you will avoid this damp air, and keep quietly at home, and amuse yourself, sweet fancier of the future, in planning how to improve these old halls when they and their unworthy master are your own. God bless you, God guard you, Helen!”