“Is that true, Helen?” asked the young doctor. “Has your father read your nature aright?”
“No,” answered Helen, looking up with an ingenuous smile. “I have felt very angry with you, and judged you very harshly several times. Yet I was most angry with myself for doing what you wished in spite of my vexation and rebellion.”
“Yet you believed me right all the time?”
“I believe so. At least you always said so.”
Helen conversed with Arthur Hazleton with the same freedom and childishness as when an inmate of his mother’s family. She was so completely a child, she could not think of herself as an object of importance in the social circle. She was inexpressibly grateful for kindness, and Arthur Hazleton’s kindness had been so constant and so deep, she felt as if her gratitude should be commensurate with the gifts received. It was the moral interest he had manifested in her—the influence he exercised over her mind and heart which she most prized. He was a kind of second conscience to her, and it did not seem possible for her to do any thing which he openly disapproved.
What Mittie could not understand was the playful, unembarrassed manner with which she met the graceful attentions of Clinton, after his fascinations had dispersed her natural shyness and reserve. She neither sought nor avoided him, flattered nor slighted him. She appeared neither dazzled nor charmed. Mittie thought this must be the most consummate art, when it was only the perfection of nature. Because the glass was so clear, so translucent, she imagined she was the victim of an optical illusion.
There was another thing in Helen, which Mittie believed the most studied policy, and that was the affection and respect she manifested for her step-mother. Nothing could be sweeter or more endearing than the “mother!” which fell from her lips, whenever she addressed her—that name which, had never yet passed her own. Mittie had never sought the love of her step-mother. She had rejected it with scorn, and yet she envied Helen the caressing warmth and maternal tenderness which was the natural reward of her own loving nature.
“Poor Miss Thusa!” exclaimed Helen, near the close of the day, “I must go and see her before the sun sets; I know, I am sure she will be glad to see me.”
“Supposing we go in a party,” said Clinton. “I should like to pay my respects to the original old lady again.”
“I should think the rough reception she gave you, would preclude the desire for a second visit,” said Mittie.