“Thank you,” said little Mary, rousing Helen from her reverie: “mamma used to pray to God to make me patient, and take me to Heaven.”
Tears started to Helen’s eyes. How could she tell that sinless little one she knew not how to pray? Ah! she was the pupil, Mary the teacher! Laying her check to hers, she said in a soft whisper, “Pray for us both, dear Mary.”
With sweet, touching, simple eloquence that little silvery voice floated on the air. The little emaciated hand upon which Helen’s face was pressed, was wet with tears—happy tears! Oh, this was what that restless soul had craved! Here at “the cross,” that world-fettered spirit should plume itself for an angel’s ceaseless flight. Ay, and a little child had led her there!
Adolph Grey wandered listlessly through that brilliant ball-room. There were sweet voices and sweeter faces, and graceful, floating forms; but his eye rested on none of them.
“Pray where is Lady Helen?” said he, wandering up to his gay hostess with a slight shade of embarrassment.
“Ah, you may well ask that! I’m so vexed at her! Every man in the room is as savage as a New Zealander. She has turned Methodist, that’s all. Just imagine; our peerless Helen thumbing greasy hymn-books at vestry meetings, listening to whining preachers, and hunting up poor dirty beggar children. I declare I thought she had too much good sense. Well, there it is; and you may as well hang your harp on the willows. She’ll have nothing to say to you now; for you know you are a sinner, Grey.”
“Very true,” said Grey, as he went into the ante-room to cloak himself for a call upon Helen; “I am a sinner; but if any woman can make a saint of me, it is Lady Helen. I have looked upon women only as toys to pass away the time; but under that gay exterior of Helen’s, there was always something to which my better nature bowed in reverence. ‘A Methodist,’ is she? Well, be it so. She has a soul above yonder frivolity, and I respect her for it.”
If in after years the great moral questions of the day had more interest for Adolph Grey than the pleasures of the turf, the billiard room, or the wine party, who shall say that Lady Helen’s influence was not a blessed one?