"Well, off with you to bed, then," she said cheerfully. She would not have felt or spoken so cheerfully if she could have seen into her little daughter's heart.
Nurse too noticed that Leigh looked pale and heavy-eyed.
She said she was afraid he had somehow caught cold. So she gave him something hot to drink after he was in bed, and soon he was fast asleep, breathing peacefully.
"He can't be very bad," thought Helena, "if he sleeps so quietly."
But though she tried not to be anxious about him, she herself could not succeed in going to sleep.
She tossed about, and dozed a little, and then woke up again—wider awake each time, it seemed to her. It was not all anxiety about Leigh; the truth was, her conscience was not at peace; she felt as if she deserved to be anxious about her little brother, for she saw clearly now, how she had been to blame—first, for giving in to the Kingleys in doing what she knew her Mother would not have approved of, and besides, and even worse than that—in concealing the wrong-doing, and telling what was "not quite true" to her trusting Mother.
The tears forced their way into Helena's eyes when she owned this to herself, and at last she felt that she could bear it no longer.
She got softly out of bed without waking Nurse, and made her way to the little room where Willie slept alone.
"Willie," she said at the door, almost in a whisper, but Willie heard her. He, too, for a wonder, was not able to sleep well to-night, and he at once sat straight up in bed.
"Yes, Nelly," he said, in a low, though frightened voice, "what is it? Is Leigh ill?"