CHAPTER XXIV.
She drew him into the garden with such true childlike joy. Now behold them seated in the arbour,—a perfect bower of sweets and blossoms; the wilderness of roof-tops and spires stretching below, broad and far; London seen dim and silent, as in a dream.
She took his hat from his brows gently, and looked him in the face with tearful penetrating eyes.
She did not say, “You are changed.” She said, “Why, why did I leave you?” and then turned away.
“Never mind me, Helen. I am man, and rudely born; speak of yourself. This lady is kind to you, then?”
“Does she not let me see you? Oh, very kind,—and look here.”
Helen pointed to fruits and cakes set out on the table. “A feast, brother.”
And she began to press her hospitality with pretty winning ways, more playful than was usual to her, and talking very fast, and with forced, but silvery, laughter.
By degrees she stole him from his gloom and reserve; and though he could not reveal to her the cause of his bitterest sorrow, he owned that he had suffered much. He would not have owned that to another living being. And then, quickly turning from this brief confession, with assurances that the worst was over, he sought to amuse her by speaking of his new acquaintance with the perch-fisher. But when he spoke of this man with a kind of reluctant admiration, mixed with compassionate yet gloomy interest, and drew a grotesque, though subdued, sketch of the wild scene in which he had been spectator, Helen grew alarmed and grave.