"Well! 'Heaven and our innocency defend and guard us!' for I do think, Helen, we are in a position that threatens vexation, to say the least of it. I wonder if Miss Cartwright's visit is to end with your absence? She is the very oddest personage! sometimes I pity her; sometimes I almost admire her; sometimes I feel afraid of her, but never by any chance can I continue even to fancy that I understand her character."
"Indeed! Yet in general you set about that rather rapidly, Rosalind. But must we not go down? I have hardly seen Fanny, and I long to talk a little to my own dear Charles."
"And you will like to have some tea after your journey. Mrs. Mowbray, I think, never stops en route?"
"In general she does not; but to-day——" a shudder ran through Helen's limbs as she remembered the travelling adventures of the day, and she stopped.
"You look tired and pale, Helen! Come down, take some tea, and then go to bed directly. If we do not act with promptitude and decision in this matter, we shall set up talking all night."
As they passed Miss Cartwright's door, Rosalind knocked, and that young lady immediately opened it.
"Oh! you are come back then? I fancied, by Mr. Cartwright's not coming this evening, that something might have occurred to prevent you?"
"If it had," said Helen, smiling, "it must have been announced by express, for you can only have had my letter this morning."
"True!" replied Miss Cartwright.
When the three young ladies entered the drawing-room, they found nobody in it but Mr. Stephen Corbold; Mrs. Mowbray having gone with Fanny to her own room, and Charles ensconced himself in the library, to avoid a tête-à-tête with the unpromising-looking stranger.