"Why should they be eternally my curse? Forget them, and go on."
"It is not only they," said Helen, almost sobbing, "though they are much; but I your type, your ideal!—I?—impossible! Oh, how can I ever be anything even of use, of aid, of comfort to one like you!"
"You can, Helen—you can," cried Harley, charmed by such ingenuous modesty. "May I not keep this hand?" And Helen left her hand in Harley's, and turned away her face, fairly weeping.
A stately step passed under the wintry trees.
"My mother," said Harley L'Estrange, looking up, "I present to you my future wife."
CHAPTER IX.
With a slow step and an abstracted air, Harley L'Estrange bent his way towards Egerton's house, after his eventful interview with Helen. He had just entered one of the streets leading into Grosvenor Square, when a young man, walking quickly from the opposite direction, came full against him, and drawing back with a brief apology, recognized him, and exclaimed, "What! you in England, Lord L'Estrange! Accept my congratulations on your return. But you seem scarcely to remember me."
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Leslie. I remember you now by your smile; but you are of an age in which it is permitted me to say that you look older than when I saw you last."
"And yet, Lord L'Estrange, it seems to me that you look younger."
Indeed, this reply was so far true that there appeared less difference of years than before between Leslie and L'Estrange; for the wrinkles in the schemer's mind were visible in his visage, while Harley's dreamy worship of Truth and Beauty seemed to have preserved to the votary the enduring youth of the divinities.