It was not a very loving meeting, but Helen was civil and Wilford was polite, offering her his hand and asking some questions about her journey.
"I was intending to meet you myself," he said, "but Mrs. Cameron does not like me to leave her, and Mark kindly offered to take the trouble off my hands."
This was the most gracious thing he had said; this the nearest approach to friendliness, and Helen felt herself hating him less than she had supposed she should. He was looking very pale and anxious, while there was on his face the light of a new joy, as if the little life begun so short a time ago had brought an added good to him, softening his haughty manner and making him even endurable to the prejudiced sister watching him so closely!
"Does Phillips know you are here?" he asked, answering his own query by ringing the bell and bidding Esther, who appeared, tell Phillips that Miss Lennox had arrived and wished for supper, explaining to Helen that since Katy's illness they had dined at three, as that accommodated them the best.
This done and Helen's baggage ordered to her room, he seemed to think he had discharged his duty as host, and as Mark had left he began to grow fidgety, for a _tête-à-tête_ with Helen was not what he desired. He had said to her all he could think to say, for it never once occurred to him to inquire after the deacon's family. He had asked for Dr. Grant, but his solicitude went no further, and the inmates of the farmhouse might have been dead and buried for aught he knew to the contrary. The omission was not made purposely, but because he really did not feel enough of interest in people so widely different from himself even to ask for them, much less to suspect how Helen's blood boiled as she detected the omission and imputed it to intended slight, feeling so glad when he at last excused himself, saying he must go back to Katy, but would send his mother down to see her. His mother. Then she was there, the one whom Helen dreaded most of all, whom she had invested with every possible terror, hoping now that she would not be in haste to come down. She might have spared herself anxiety on this point, as the lady in question was not anxious to meet a person who, could she have had her way, would not have been there at all.
From the first moment of consciousness after the long hours of suffering, Katy had asked for Helen, rather than her mother, feeling that the former would be more welcome, and could more easily conform to their customs.
"Send for Helen; I am so tired, and she could always rest me," was her reply, when asked by Wilford what he could do for her. "Send for Helen; I want her so much," she had said to Mrs. Cameron, when she came, repeating the wish until a consultation was held between the mother and son, touching the propriety of sending for Helen. "She would be of no use whatever, and might excite our Katy. Quiet is highly important just now," Mrs. Cameron had said, thus veiling under pretended concern for Katy her aversion to the girl whose independence in declining her dressmaker had never been forgiven, and whom she had set down in her mind as rude and ignorant.
She was well suited with Katy now, petting and caressing and talking constantly of her; but it did not follow that she must like the sister, too, and so she checked the impulse which would have prompted Wilford to send for her as Katy so much desired.
"If her coming would do Katy harm she ought not to come," and so Wilford's conscience was partially quieted, white Katy in her darkened room moaned on.
"Send for Sister Helen, please send for Sister Helen."