"Certainly Paget's intellect and nerve may be considered colossal."
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Esther Helps still took charge of her father's house in Acacia Villas. She was still Esther Helps. Perhaps a more beautiful Esther than of old; a little steadier, too, a little graver—altogether a better girl.
For some unaccountable reason, after that night at the theatre when Wyndham had sat by her side and taken her back from destruction to her father's arms, she had almost ceased to flirt. She said nothing now about marrying a gentleman some day, and as the men who were not gentlemen found she would have nothing to do with them, it began to be an almost understood thing among her friends that Esther, lovely as she was, would not marry. This resolve on her part, for it amounted to an unspoken resolve, was followed by other changes. She turned her attention to her hitherto sadly neglected mind. She read poetry with Cherry, and history and literature generally by herself. Then she tried to improve her mode of speech, and studied works on etiquette, and for a short time became frightfully stilted and artificial. This phase, however, did hot last long. The girl had really a warm and affectionate heart, and that heart all of a sudden had been set on fire. The flame never went out. It was a holy flame, and it raised and purified her whole nature.
She loved Wyndham as she might have loved Christ had He been on earth. Wyndham seemed to her to be the embodiment of all nobility. He had saved her, none knew better than she did from how much. It was the least she could do to make her whole life worthy of her savior. She guessed by instinct that he liked refinement, and gentle speech, and womanly ways. So it became her aim in life to seek after those things, and as far as possible to acquire them.
Then the news of his death reached her. Only Cherry knew how night after night Esther cried herself to sleep. Only Cherry guessed why Esther's cheeks were so sunken and her eyes so heavy. Her violent grief, however, soon found consolation. Gerald had always been only a star to be gazed at from a distance; he was still that. When she thought of heaven she pictured seeing him there first of all. She thought that when the time came for her to go there he might stand somewhere near the gates and smile to see how she, too, had conquered, and was worthy.
Now she turned her attention to works of charity, to a life of religion. It was all done for the sake of an idol, but the result had turned this flippant, worldly, vain creature into a sweet woman, strong in the singleness of her aim.
Esther cared nothing at all about dress now. She would have joined a Deaconess' Institution but she did not care to leave her father. She did a great deal of work, however, amongst the poor, and at the beginning of this severe winter she joined a band of working sisters in East London as an associate. She usually went away to her work immediately after breakfast, returning often not until late at night, but as she wore the uniform of the association, beautiful as she was she could venture into the lowest quarters, and almost come home at any hour without rendering herself liable to insult.
One night as Cherry was preparing supper she was surprised to hear Esther's step in the passage two or three hours before her usual time of returning. Cherry was still the same strange mixture of poet and cook that she had ever been. With the "Lays of Ancient Rome" in one hand and her frying-pan held aloft in the other, she rushed out to know what was the matter.