"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.
"Oh, brother, do not go there again,—do not see more of this bad man."
"Bad!—no! Hopeless and unhappy, he has stooped to stimulants and oblivion—but you cannot understand these things, my pretty preacher."
"Yes, I do, Leonard. What is the difference between being good and bad?
The good do not yield to temptations, and the bad do."
The definition was so simple and so wise that Leonard was more struck with it than he might have been by the most elaborate sermon by Parson Dale.
"I have often murmured to myself since I lost you, 'Helen was my good angel; '—say on. For my heart is dark to myself, and while you speak light seems to dawn on it."
This praise so confused Helen that she was long before she could obey the command annexed to it. But, by little and little, words came to both more frankly. And then he told her the sad tale of Chatterton, and waited, anxious to hear her comments.