"That struck me," said the girl. "I thought perhaps she wasn't very well, but she told me there was nothing the matter. Darling Jessie is so reserved. She never tells me anything. Certainly she looks well: do you think she has anything on her mind?"
"I don't see what she could have. But it's odd that it has struck all of us."
Helena sighed and shook her head with a pretty, unreproachful air.
"I sometimes wish that Jessie would make more of a friend of me," she said. "I try so hard to get close to her, but all the time I feel she is keeping me at arm's length. It would be lovely to have a sister who would admit me to her own, own self. But I always have to tap, so to speak, at Jessie's door, and she so often says she won't open it."
"Was she always like that?" asked Archie, seeing that Helena's eyes were dim and bright.
"Yes, but lately I think it has been worse. I wish Jessie would let me in. However, I am always waiting, and I think Jessie knows that. It is no use pressing for confidence, is it? One can only wait."
This picture, so simply and pathetically conveyed by Helena of herself waiting, a little dim-eyed, for Jessie to admit her, was very convincing, and Archie wondered at the contrast between the two sisters, the one so childlike in her confidence that all the world was her friend, the other holding herself rather detached, rather aloof, without that welcoming charm of manner that surely was the expression of an adorable mind. It was not wholly the light of his dawning love that invested the sketch with such tender colouring, for there was a great finish and consistency in Helena's presentation of herself which might have deceived the most neutral and heart-whole of observers.
Such was the first impression: then suddenly some instinct that lay below the surface surged up in rebellion against it, and washed the tender colouring out. It told him that the impression was a false one, that Jessie, so far from being callous and self-centred, as was the suggestion conveyed by Helena's words, was of faithful and golden heart. And then, looking idly over the crowd that was growing thick on the broad gravel walk, he suddenly caught sight of Jessie herself looking at them. She was some little distance behind the rails that separated the ride from the path, and she instantly looked away, spoke to a girl who was with her, and strolled on. But Archie felt quite sure that she had seen them.
He turned to Helena.
"Surely that is Jessie," he said to her, pointing with his whip.