The Vicar of Wrexhill

by Frances Milton Trollope

"And that's the reason you appear so profoundly melancholy and miserable at this moment," said Lady Harrington, looking with no trifling degree of satisfaction at the radiant good-humour and happiness which the unexpected arrival of Helen had caused to be visible in the countenance of her boisterous husband. "Do you find William much altered, Helen?" she continued. "I wonder if any one has had the grace to present Colonel Harrington to Miss Torrington?"

"Helen did me that kind office," said the colonel, "and I suppose she must do the same for me to little Fanny. I long to see if she continues as surpassingly beautiful as she was when I took my sad, reluctant leave of Mowbray Park."

Rosalind immediately became answerable for the undiminished beauty of Fanny, adding to her report on this point a declaration that the whole family were anxious to renew their acquaintance with him.

This was the nearest approach that any of the party ventured to make towards the mention of Mowbray Park or its inhabitants. Nevertheless, the breakfast passed cheerfully, and even without a word from Sir Gilbert in allusion to the destitute condition of Helen, and her brother and sister. But when even the baronet had disposed of his last egg-shell, pushed the ham fairly away from him, and swallowed his last bowl of tea, the beautiful colour of Helen began gradually to deepen; she ceased to speak, and hardly seemed to hear what was said to her.

Rosalind took the hint, and with more tact than is usually found in the possession of seventeen and a half, she said to Lady Harrington,

"If I promise to keep my hands not only from picking and stealing, but from touching, will your ladyship indulge me with a sight of your press, and your boxes, and a volume or two of your hortus siccus? for I feel considerable aspirations after the glory of becoming a botanist myself."

"My ladyship will show you something infinitely more to the purpose, then, if you will come to the hothouse with me," replied Lady Harrington, rising, and giving an intelligible glance to her son as she did so, which immediately caused him to rise and follow her. "I cannot take you where I should be sure to overhear them, my dear," she added in a whisper as she led Rosalind from the room; "for if my rough diamond should chance to be too rough with her, I should infallibly burst out upon them; and yet I know well enough that I should do nothing but mischief."

Helen was thus left alone with the kind-hearted but pertinacious baronet. He seemed to have a misgiving of the attack that was about to be opened upon him; for he made a fidgetty movement in his chair, pushed it back, and looked so very much inclined to run away, that Helen saw no time was to be lost, and, in a voice not over-steady, said,

"I want to speak to you, Sir Gilbert, about my dear mamma. I fear from what you said to Charles, and more still by nobody's coming from Oakley to see us, that you are angry with her.—If it is about the will, Sir Gilbert, you do her great injustice: I am very, very sure that she neither wished for such a will, nor knew any thing about it."

"It is very pretty and dutiful in you, Miss Helen, to say so, and to think so too if you can. Perhaps I might have done the same at nineteen; but at sixty-five, child, one begins to know a little better what signs and tokens mean.—There is no effect without a cause, Miss Helen. The effect in this affair is already pretty visible to all eyes, and will speedily become more so, you may depend upon it. The cause may be still hid from babes and sucklings, but not from an old fellow like me, who knew your poor father, girl, before you were hatched or thought of,—and knew him to be both a good and a wise man, who would never have done the deed he did unless under the influence of one as ever near and ever dear to him as your mother."