“You don’t think very badly of my poor brother, do you, Mr. Wingfold?” said Helen, meekly.
“It is a terrible fate,” he returned. “I think I never saw a lovelier disposition. I do hope his mind will soon be more composed. I think he knows where alone he can find rest. I am well aware how foolish that of which I speak seems to some minds, Miss Lingard; but when a man is once overwhelmed in his own deeds, when they have turned into spectres to mock at him, when he loathes himself and turns with sickness from past, present, and future, I know but one choice left, and that is between the death your friend Mr. Bascombe preaches, and the life preached by Jesus, the crucified Jew. Into the life I hope your brother will enter.”
“I am so glad you don’t hate him.”
“Hate him! Who but a demon could hate him?”
Helen lifted a grateful look from eyes that swam in tears. The terror of his possible counsel for the moment vanished. He could never tell him to give himself up!
“But, as I told you, I am a poor scholar in these high matters,” resumed the curate, “and I want to bring Mr. Polwarth to see him.”
“The dwarf!” exclaimed Helen, shuddering at the remembrance of what she had gone through at the cottage.
“Yes. That man’s soul is as grand and beautiful and patient as his body is insignificant and distorted and troubled. He is the wisest and best man I have ever known.
“I must ask Leopold,” returned Helen, who, the better the man was represented, felt the more jealous and fearful of the advice he might give. Her love and her conscience were not yet at one with each other.
They parted at the door from the garden, and she returned to the sick-room.