He bowed, and settled himself in a low easy-chair with his back to the windows. No faded beauty of the other sex could have entertained a greater objection than Sir Henry to flourishing "crow's-feet" and wrinkles in the light of day.
"It's no wonder I'm here," was the smiling reply, "for I always want to see you!"
"And without anything particular to say," she retorted, adding hurriedly—"However, that's not the point. Sir Henry, you care for your daughter?"
"More than for anything in the world!" was his grave rejoinder.
"I know it—I know it," she answered, and the colour deepened in her cheek. "Well, now, men are blind as bats, I think, in all matters of affection; but have you not lately noticed an alteration in Helen's manner, spirits, in her very looks? Can't you see there's something wrong with the girl? Can't you guess what it is?"
He looked startled, disturbed, distressed.
"Not the lungs, Mrs. Lascelles!" he exclaimed. "She runs up-stairs like a lap-wing, and will waltz for twenty minutes together at a spin. There can't be much amiss. Not her lungs, surely; nor her heart!"
Mrs. Lascelles laughed.
"Yes, her heart," she repeated, "though not in the sense you mean. Not anatomically, but sentimentally, I fear; which is sometimes almost as bad."
He looked immensely relieved.