At that, Esther could not suppress a heart cry so full of agony that
Helen was terrified.
"Mother! mother!" was all she could say. But Esther quickly calmed herself.
"Helen, if this young man should be unworthy of you, could you give yourself to him simply because he had money to offer?"
"No, no, mother, I am not wicked like that. You must not think so. I could not help questioning Mr. Bauer's statements. He is not altogether———" she could not say the word "disinterested," and her mother said it for her.
"But he knows how hopeless his case is. He is not expecting to gain any favour by telling me what he knows. Can you not see it is simply to save you from making the most awful mistake a girl can make in all her life when she unknowingly marries such a man? Bauer never expects to be a successful suitor. I do not believe you have any true measure of his feeling for you. But he is willing to risk anything to spare you misery. Cannot you see that? What other motive could he have? He is not a rival. The poor fellow told me frankly that he had given up all hope for himself. It is pure friendship, and it is so rare and so beautiful a thing that you cannot afford to trample it down or disbelieve the story he told me. Helen, if you should let your admiration for money and its power take such a step as to encourage a man like Van Shaw, it would break your mother's heart. But worse than that, it would break your own. Oh, you cannot, you will not do such a thing."
What could Helen say to that? And what less could Esther say to her? Let the careless mothers in America answer—the mothers who never talk frankly with their daughters about these things, and the careless daughters who never take their mothers into their confidence. How many unhappy marriages would never occur if mothers did their duty and daughters listened to and heeded the best friend they have on earth.
When Mrs. Douglas had finally fallen asleep, Helen still remained broad awake. Things had been said in the heart talk that made it impossible for her to compose herself to sleep. She could no longer doubt the truthfulness of Bauer or his clear motive, and strange tumult arose in her thought over the statement her mother had made about his abandonment of any thought of her as her suitor. The fact that he had expressed such a sentiment to her mother made Helen a little angry. Why should he give up all hope so easily—why—what was she thinking? She said to herself she did not want men to be cowards, but surely Felix Bauer was not a coward. A man who would go over a cliff like that did not deserve to have a timid girl like her call him a coward. Only———
And in the midst of all her other feelings she could not altogether shut out the sight of Van Shaw, broken and bruised as he had lain in agony there on the seat in the little chapel and she could not, even after all her mother had said, quite dismiss him from her thought. Her cheek glowed, as she raised the question in her imagination, of money and its fascinating power. Were all young men of wealth like Van Shaw? Would it never be possible for her to marry wealth and virtue together? And again there was that strange commingling of shame and exultation as she realised what a power she possessed to attract even such an one as Van Shaw, and try as hard as she would she did not drive out the scene of his declaration that morning. At any rate, it was genuine. Let him be what he had been, might she not awaken all the latent good in his nature and save him—her mother's ideas were very strict and serious. They were perhaps puritanical. But after all———
So she restlessly went back and forth in her argument and only fell asleep towards morning, her heart and mind wearied with the whole thing. Before she fell asleep she resolved to have a talk with Miss Gray and make her tell what she knew. She said to herself she would at least not dismiss Van Shaw entirely until she knew even more than her mother had been able to tell her about him.
But before the opportunity came for Miss Gray's confidence, several unexpected events occurred that made Helen wonder if she were in a land of enchantment. After what had already become a part of her history in this strange land, she might be pardoned, if, with her highly romantic temperament, she felt excited to an unusual degree.