“It surely could not be that your grandfather would require of you any thing improper?”
Helen was silent.
“Then it is so. My dear child,” pursued the lady, kindly, “I have lived longer than you, and naturally have more knowledge of the world. I need not say that I have every disposition to befriend you, not only for your own sake, but for the sake of my own little Helen, who, had she remained to me, would have been about your age. Will you not, then, confide in me so far as to inform me what it was that your grandfather required of you?”
Helen considered a moment, and then, with a rapidity of decision which sometimes comes after long and anxious thought, decided to communicate every thing.
“I will tell you every thing,” she said, “if you will promise that no harm shall come to the man who brought me here.”
“Your grandfather?”
“Will you promise?” asked Helen, anxiously.
“Yes, Helen,” said Mrs. Gregory: “though I cannot conceive what is to be the nature of your revelation, I will promise that no harm shall befall your grandfather.”
“You are so good and kind,” said the child, “that I can trust to what you say. Then I will tell you, first of all, that the one who came with me is not my grandfather.”