"My poor sister!" sighed Mrs. Desmond, who was in a pleasant mood, thankful to be getting safely away from the neighbourhood of the fever. "My poor sister! No doubt she will feel the boy's loss; but, after all, there will be one less to provide for. And Harold was the most troublesome of them all. These trials are often blessings in disguise."
"Nonsense!" said the colonel, with a quick glance at Helen. "Harold will live to trouble them yet. You see if he doesn't. And as for his being troublesome, it's my belief that parents like the tiresome children best."
Mrs. Desmond pursed up her thin lips, and glanced at Helen in her turn.
"You speak without knowledge, John," she returned coldly. "To love a child that is continually paining you is impossible. It is a piece of modern cant to say that it is. Of course one must do one's duty towards a troublesome child. That is what you mean, I suppose."
The colonel merely shrugged his shoulders and made no reply. He did not find his wife charming when she took this tone.
"I know some one who is sorry to leave Longford," he said after a pause, looking kindly at Helen, who, white and silent, sat opposite to her father.
"Sorry!" began Helen half-stupidly. She was putting a strong restraint upon herself, for she dreaded showing any feeling before her stepmother.
"Surely Helen must be rather glad than sorry," interposed the latter. "If I were in her place I should pray that I might never see Longford again."
Both the colonel and Helen understood Mrs. Desmond's meaning. But although the former threw himself back with an impatient gesture, while Helen's lips quivered and her cheeks flushed, they both took refuge in silence, which remained unbroken until the station was reached.
A fortnight later and the days at Longford seemed almost like a dream to Helen, so changed were the outward surroundings of her life.