Helen drew a chair up to the bedside and began to read.
The book was a work of fiction, the heroine one who had to struggle with life very much as they had done. It was the work of a superior writer, and written with a charm of style that made it additionally attractive.
Helen read fifty pages, when the approach of evening made it necessary for her to pause.
“I will come in to-morrow morning, and read a little while,” she said. “Good night, Martha. I suppose I must be getting ready for the theatre.”
It was on this evening that Mr. Sharp had the memorable interview with Lewis Rand, which resulted in restoring to Helen and her father a magnificent fortune.
CHAPTER XL.
UNCLE ZEBINA’S OFFER.
Helen and the young artist, who roomed opposite, remained fast friends. From the evening when, by a fortunate chance, he was enabled to defend her from insult he established himself as her evening escort from the theatre. These daily walks enabled each better to understand the other. They became mutual confidants. Helen indulged in sanguine anticipations of the success of her father’s invention,—anticipations in which the young man’s practical sense could not permit him to join, yet he was so careful of Helen’s feelings, that he never, by a word, sought to undermine her perfect trust in her father’s ability to achieve success.
Herbert, too, had his dreams of fame and fortune. He was an enthusiastic lover of his art. No future seemed so bright to him as that in which he figured himself an artist, achieving fame by his works. Others might become generals, judges, statesmen; he desired nothing better than to be admitted into the confidence of Nature, and to become her interpreter.
Many were the pleasant conversations on art which he held with Helen. She looked up to him with affectionate reverence, and believed in him fully. The compact into which they had entered, to regard each other as brother and sister, had been faithfully kept. Not seldom Herbert was an invited guest at Mr. Ford’s table. Helen presided on such occasions with proud delight, and with an assumption of matronly dignity, which lent her new charms in the eyes of her father and the young artist, who felt his isolation relieved by admittance to the humble home of the inventor.
But of late Helen perceived with some concern, not unmingled with surprise, that Herbert had grown less social and communicative. A shadow seemed to rest upon his features. She tried in gentle ways to lure him on to talk of himself, but without success. Something was evidently troubling him, and she was anxious to learn what it was.