a little note to Robert about it, to be given to him. Oh, if I could only have lived to help—I should have tried so hard to be worthy to have a part in it. Not like you, dear, with your sweetness and nobleness, for God seems to have singled you out for this—but just to have had a little part. How wonderful it would have been, bringing peace and health and gladness where only sorrow and misery was before, and—and—"
Mrs. Thornton's eyes closed, and she lay for a moment quiet.
A blackness seemed to settle upon Helena—and how cold it was! She shivered. Her dark eyes, wide, tearless now, stared, startled, dazed, at the white face on the pillow crowned with its mass of golden hair. Her sweetness! Her nobleness! Helena's lips half parted and her breath came in quick, fierce, little gasps—it seemed as though she had been struck a blow that she could not quite understand because somehow it had numbed her senses—only there was a hurt that curiously, strangely seemed to mock as it stabbed with pain.
"There is Robert"—Mrs. Thornton spoke again—"I am sure he will do as I have asked him to do about this, but—you can have a great deal of influence with him. It—it perhaps may seem a strange thing to say, but I pray that you two may be brought very close to each other. Robert needs a good, true woman so much in his life—and I—we—we—my illness—we have never had a home in its truest sense. Yes,
it is strange for me perhaps to talk like this—but it is in my heart. I would like to think of you both engaged in this wonderful work together."
Again, through exhaustion, Mrs. Thornton stopped—and Helena, from gazing at the other's pallid countenance in a sort of involuntary, frightened fascination, dropped her head suddenly upon the bed-spread and hid her face.
Mrs. Thornton's hand found Helena's head and rested upon it.
"I would like to see Robert happy," she murmured, after a little silence. "Riches do not make happiness—they are so sad and empty a thing when the heart is empty. I know he would be happy with you—he has spoken so much of you lately—perhaps—perhaps—"
Mrs. Thornton's voice was very faint—the words reached Helena plainly enough as words, but they seemed to reach her consciousness in an unreal, unnatural, blunted way, coma-like—pregnant of significance, yet with the significance itself elusive, evading her.
"A good woman," whispered Mrs. Thornton, "I have tried to be a good woman—but—but my life, our wealth, our position has made it so artificial. You have never known these things, dear—and so you are just as God made you—good woman, so pure, so wonderful in your freshness and your innocence. Robert's life has been so barren—so barren. I would like to know that—that it will not always be so. Oh, if it could only be that you and he should carry on