She was about to make a very lively demonstration, but Helen checked her.
“Be not alarmed,” she said, hastily; “make no noise; do as I direct you, for I shall need your assistance.”
“You are really and truly Miss Grahame come home again?” asked the girl, her eyes almost starting out of their sockets.
Helen almost smiled as she answered in the affirmative, for the features of the inquirer betrayed so singular an expression.
The girl clapped her hands.
“Oh, how happy you will make Miss Eva!” she exclaimed; “she has done nothing but weep and sigh for you since you have been away.”
Helen felt a rush of tears to her eyes, but she made no remark in answer to this observation; she however put some questions to the girl respecting her own room, and finding that it remained precisely as she left it, she went to it, followed by the maid.
In a desk belonging to her—and which in her illness she had hidden, for it contained many of Hugh’s letters—was a store of money, sums the balances of many quarters’ allowances, hoarded under the impression that one day they would collectively be sufficient to buy some coveted jewelled trinket which would exceed in price an amount her father would be likely to approach in the purchase of a gift for her. The gold was needed for a very different purpose now.
She discovered the desk precisely as she had left it, and she made herself at once mistress of what she came to obtain. She went to her wardrobe. Her dresses hung there as she had left them, and after surveying them for a minute, she turned to Evangeline’s maid, and said abruptly—
“Assist me to dress.”