About half an hour passed in this manner, and then the maid came up and tapped at her door, saying, "He is gone, Miss Helen:" and the fair prisoner, glad to be released, opened her door and descended to the room below. "What shall I do? How shall I act?" was Helen's first thought. "To betray them to justice I cannot, I must not; but yet it is very horrible. There will be terrible bloodshed! And Sir Arthur Adelon, too; who could ever have suspected that he would join them? Oh, I wish he would be warned! I will tell Eda. She has more power over him than any one, and he may be persuaded to refrain. My uncle will have his course; nothing will turn him, I am sure, and he will ruin himself utterly in the end; but I do hope and trust he will have no influence over my father. Oh, no! the men said he would have nought to do with it. But hark!"
There were steps heard descending. Two or three people quitted the house, and after a lapse of a few minutes, Norries entered the room with a calm, even cheerful countenance, and seated himself beside Helen.
"What is the matter, little pet?" he said. "You look sad and anxious. Is your arm paining you, my dear?"
"Oh, no!" replied Helen; "it has never pained me at all since it was set. I think it is quite well now."
"Who was that came in about half an hour ago?" asked Norries, somewhat abruptly. "I heard the bell ring, and a man's foot in the passage."
"It was Lord Hadley," answered Helen, colouring a little at the very mention of his name. "He came in to to wait for my father, I suppose, or upon some such excuse."
"My dear Helen," said Norries, laying his hand quietly upon hers, "have nought to do with him, see him as little as possible; for though to suspect you, my dear child, of anything that is wrong, is quite out of the question for those who know you, yet the frequent visits of men who, in our bad state of society, hold a rank far superior to your own, and especially of such a dissolute, thoughtless youth as this, may injure your fair fame with those who do not know you."
The kindly tone in which he spoke encouraged Helen; and looking up in his face, she said, "This is a subject on which I much wish to speak to you, for I dare not tell my father. I did not see Lord Hadley, my dear uncle, for I went to my own room the moment I saw him coming, and ordered the maid to tell him, if he asked for me, that I would not see him, in those plain terms."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Norries, now much interested; "then he must have done something very wrong, Helen."
"He has said things to me which I cannot repeat, my dear uncle," she replied, with a glowing face. "He wanted to persuade me to leave my father's house, and go away to London with him; and--and--he has behaved very ill to me, in short."