“Thanks. I’ll take him there myself,” answered Berkeley, who was now determined not to set out for the wilderness without knowing his fate.
“How well he rides!” observed the artist. “What a soldierly bearing he has!”
Then, gazing earnestly in Helen’s face, he added:
“Berkeley would make a capital St. George. Would he not? Shall I put him in the painting instead of myself?”
At this question Helen’s cheek crimsoned, and without making any response she awaited Berkeley’s return; while Evelyn murmured to himself: “Alas! alas! I see I should do well enough for a picture; but he would be her real St. George.”
In a few minutes Berkeley reappeared, and as he entered the room he seemed to read Helen’s thoughts at a glance; for the first words he uttered were:
“Evelyn, may I enquire who is to sit for St. George?”
Here Evelyn turned to Helen, upon whom Berkeley’s eyes were fastened, saying: “Dear Helen, please answer for me.”
This was a cruel moment for the girl—most cruel! What a throng of memories rushed upon her!—memories of far-off, sunny days, when she and the pretty boy used to saunter and dream hand-in-hand together along the shady paths that lay between her native home and his. And now all these memories became so many voices pleading powerfully in Evelyn’s behalf; he had loved her from the beginning, and she had only met Berkeley when she was grown up to womanhood.
But when she thought of the latter, she remembered her dead mother and what she had said of him—of his inner worth, his talents, his energy. Then, too, since Helen had been in Maryland, Berkeley had shown in many ways that he was attached to her; and, moreover, he was a man in the truest sense of the word—a man on whom she and her heedless father might lean and find support. His every waking hour was devoted to some useful employment. Far and wide he was known as an able, active, daring man; and at this very moment he stood before her all equipped to plunge into the trackless forest to pioneer the way for another settlement. His views, too, of the future had won Helen’s heart; she believed, as he did, that in America the church was destined to spread and to glean a more golden harvest than in old, worn-out Europe. And so, after a painful inward struggle, which revealed itself not faintly in her countenance, Helen’s response came, and, turning with tearful eyes to Berkeley, she said: