On arriving at the station, I found that I was the only traveler, by a first-class carriage, who left the train. A young lady, remarkable by her good looks and good dressing, seemed to have noticed this trifling circumstance. She approached me with a ready smile. “I believe I am speaking to my father’s friend,” she said; “my name is Helena Gracedieu.”
Here was one of the Minister’s two “daughters”; and that one of the two—as I discovered the moment I shook hands with her—who was my friend’s own child. Miss Helena recalled to me her mother’s face, infinitely improved by youth and health, and by a natural beauty which that cruel and deceitful woman could never have possessed. The slanting forehead and the shifting, flashing eyes, that I recollected in the parent, were reproduced (slightly reproduced, I ought to say) in the child. As for the other features, I had never seen a more beautiful nose and mouth, or a more delicately-shaped outline, than was presented by the lower part of the face. But Miss Helena somehow failed to charm me. I doubt if I should have fallen in love with her, even in the days when I was a foolish young man.
The first question that I put, as we drove from the station to the house, related naturally to her father.
“He is very ill,” she began; “I am afraid you must prepare yourself to see a sad change. Nerves. The mischief first showed itself, the doctor tells us, in derangement of his nervous system. He has been, I regret to tell you, obstinate in refusing to give up his preaching and pastoral work. He ought to have tried rest at the seaside. Things have gone on from bad to worse. Last Sunday, at the beginning of his sermon, he broke down. Very, very sad, is it not? The doctor says that precious time has been lost, and he must make up his mind to resign his charge. He won’t hear of it. You are his old friend. Please try to persuade him.”
Fluently spoken; the words well chosen; the melodious voice reminding me of the late Mrs. Gracedieu’s advantages in that respect; little sighs judiciously thrown in here and there, just at the right places; everything, let me own, that could present a dutiful daughter as a pattern of propriety—and nothing, let me add, that could produce an impression on my insensible temperament. If I had not been too discreet to rush at a hasty conclusion, I might have been inclined to say: her mother’s child, every inch of her!
The interest which I was still able to feel in my friend’s domestic affairs centered in the daughter whom he had adopted.
In her infancy I had seen the child, and liked her; I was the one person living (since the death of Mrs. Gracedieu) who knew how the Minister had concealed the sad secret of her parentage; and I wanted to discover if the hereditary taint had begun to show itself in the innocent offspring of the murderess. Just as I was considering how I might harmlessly speak of Miss Helena’s “sister,” Miss Helena herself introduced the subject.
“May I ask,” she resumed, “if you were disappointed when you found nobody but me to meet you at our station?”
Here was an opportunity of paying her a compliment, if I had been a younger man, or if she had produced a favorable impression on me. As it was, I hit—if I may praise myself—on an ingenious compromise.
“What excuse could I have,” I asked, “for feeling disappointed?”