Helen and Arthur; or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel

“Yet you believed me right all the time?”

“I believe so. At least you always said so.”

Helen conversed with Arthur Hazleton with the same freedom and childishness as when an inmate of his mother’s family. She was so completely a child, she could not think of herself as an object of importance in the social circle. She was inexpressibly grateful for kindness, and Arthur Hazleton’s kindness had been so constant and so deep, she felt as if her gratitude should be commensurate with the gifts received. It was the moral interest he had manifested in her—the influence he exercised over her mind and heart which she most prized. He was a kind of second conscience to her, and it did not seem possible for her to do any thing which he openly disapproved.

What Mittie could not understand was the playful, unembarrassed manner with which she met the graceful attentions of Clinton, after his fascinations had dispersed her natural shyness and reserve. She neither sought nor avoided him, flattered nor slighted him. She appeared neither dazzled nor charmed. Mittie thought this must be the most consummate art, when it was only the perfection of nature. Because the glass was so clear, so translucent, she imagined she was the victim of an optical illusion.

There was another thing in Helen, which Mittie believed the most studied policy, and that was the affection and respect she manifested for her step-mother. Nothing could be sweeter or more endearing than the “mother!” which fell from her lips, whenever she addressed her—that name which, had never yet passed her own. Mittie had never sought the love of her step-mother. She had rejected it with scorn, and yet she envied Helen the caressing warmth and maternal tenderness which was the natural reward of her own loving nature.

“Poor Miss Thusa!” exclaimed Helen, near the close of the day, “I must go and see her before the sun sets; I know, I am sure she will be glad to see me.”

“Supposing we go in a party,” said Clinton. “I should like to pay my respects to the original old lady again.”

“I should think the rough reception she gave you, would preclude the desire for a second visit,” said Mittie.

“Oh! I like to conquer difficulties,” he exclaimed. “The greater the obstacles, the greater the triumph.”

Perhaps he meant nothing more than met the ear, but Mittie’s omnipotent self-love felt wounded. She had been too easy a conquest, whose value was already beginning to lessen.

“Miss Thusa and Helen are such especial friends,” she added, without seeming to have heard his remark, “that I should think their first meeting had better be private. I suspect Miss Thusa has manufactured a new set of ghost stories for Helen’s peculiar benefit.”

“Are you a believer in ghosts?” asked Clinton of Helen. “If so, I envy you.”

“Envy me!”

“Yes! There is such a pleasure in credulity. I sigh now over the vanished illusions of my boyhood.”

“I once believed in ghosts,” replied Helen, “and even now, in solitude and darkness, the memories of childhood come back to me so powerfully, they are appalling. Miss Thusa might tell me a thousand stories now, without inspiring belief, while those told me in childhood can never be forgotten, or their impressions effaced.”

“Yet you like Miss Thusa, and seem to remember her with affection.”

“She was so kind to me that I could not help loving her—and she seemed so lonely, with so few to love her, it seemed cruel to shut up the heart against her.”

“One may be incredulous without being cruel, I should think,” said Mittie, with asperity. She felt the reproach, and could not believe it accidental. Poor Mittie! how much she suffered.

Helen, who was really desirous of seeing Miss Thusa, and did not wish for the companionship of Clinton, stole away from the rest and took the path she well remembered, through the woods. The excessive hilarity of the morning had faded from her spirits. There was something indescribable about Mittie that annoyed and pained her. The gleam of kindness with which she had greeted her had all gone out, and left dullness and darkness in its stead. She could not get near her heart. At every avenue it seemed closed against her, and resisted the golden key of affection as effectually as the wrench of violence.

“She must love me,” thought Helen, pursuing her way towards Miss Thusa’s, and picking up here and there a yellow leaf that came fluttering down at her feet. “I cannot live in coldness and estrangement with one I ought to love so dearly. It must be some fault of mine; I must discover what it is, and if it he my right eye, I would willingly pluck it out to secure her affection. Alice is going home, and how worse than lonely will I be!”

Helen caught a glimpse of the stream where, when a child, she used to wade in the wimpling waters, and gather the diamond mica that sparkled on the sand. She thought of the time when the young doctor had washed the strawberry stains from her face, and wiped it with his nice linen handkerchief, and her heart glowed at the remembrance of his kindness. Mingled with this glow there was the flush of shame, for she could not help starting at every sudden rustling sound, thinking the coiling snake was lurking in ambush.

There was an air of desolation about Miss Thusa’s cabin, which she had never noticed before. The stepping-stones of the door looked so much like grave-stones, so damp and mossy, it seemed sacrilege to tread upon them. Helen hardly did touch them, she skipped so lightly over the threshold, and stood before Miss Thusa smiling and out of breath.

There she sat at her wheel, solemn and ancestral, and gray as ever, her foot upon the treadle, her hand upon the distaff, looking so much like a fixture of the place, it seemed strange not to see the moss growing green and damp on her stone-colored garments.

“Miss Thusa!” exclaimed Helen, and the aged spinster started at the sound of that sweet, childish voice. Helen’s arms were around her neck in a moment, and without knowing why, she burst into an unexpected fit of weeping.

“I am so foolish,” said Helen, after she had dashed away her tears, and squeezed herself into a little seat between Miss Thusa and her wheel, “but I am so glad to get home, so glad to see you all once more.”

Miss Thusa’s iron nerves seemed quite unstrung by the unexpected delight of greeting her favorite child. She had not heard of her return, and could scarcely realize her presence. She kept wiping her glasses, without seeming conscious that the moisture was in her own eyes, gazed on Helen’s upturned face with indescribable tenderness, smoothed back her golden brown hair, and then stooping down, kissed, with an air of benediction, her fair young brow.

“You have not forgotten me, then! You are still nothing but a child, nothing but little Helen. And yet you are grown—and you look healthier and rounder, and a shade more womanly. You are not as handsome as Mittie, and yet where one stops to look at her, ten will turn to gaze on you.”

“Oh, no! Mittie is grown so beautiful no one could think of any one else when she is near.”

“The young man with the long black hair thinks her beautiful? Does he not?”

“I believe so. Who could help it?”

“Does she love you better than she used to?” asked Miss Thusa.

“I will try to deserve her love,” replied Helen, evasively; “but, Miss Thusa, I am coming every day to take spinning lessons of you. I really want to learn to spin. Perhaps father may fail one of these days, and I be thrown on my own resources, and then I could earn my living as you do now. Will you bequeath me your wheel, Miss Thusa?”

The bright smile with which she looked up to Miss Thusa, died away in a kind of awe, as she met the solemn earnestness of her glance.

“Yes, yes, child, I have long intended it as a legacy of love to you. There is a history hanging to it, which I will tell you by and by. For more than forty years that wheel and I have been companions and friends, and it is so much a part of myself, that if any one should cut into the old carved wood, I verily believe the blood-drops would drip from my heart. Things will grow together, powerfully, Helen, after a long, long time. And so you want to learn to spin, child. Well! suppose you sit down and try. These little white fingers will soon be cut by the flax, though, I can tell you.”

“May I, Miss Thusa, may I?” cried Helen, seating herself with childish delight at the venerable instrument, and giving it a whirl that might have made the flax smoke. Miss Thusa looked on with a benevolent and patronizing air, while Helen pressed her foot upon the treadle, wondering why it would jerk so, when it went round with Miss Thusa so smoothly, and pulled out the flax at arm’s length, wondering why it would run into knots and bunches, when it glided so smooth and even through Miss Thusa’s practiced fingers. Helen was so busy, and so excited by the new employment, she did not perceive a shadow cross the window, nor was she aware of the approach of any one, till an unusually gay laugh made her turn her head.

“I thought Miss Thusa looked wonderfully rejuvenated,” said Arthur Hazleton, leaning against the window-frame on the outside of the building, “but methinks she is the more graceful spinner, after all.”

“This is only my first lesson,” cried Helen, jumping up, for the band had slipped from the groove, and hung in a hopeless tangle—“and I fear Miss Thusa will never be willing to give me another.”

“Ten thousand, child, if you will take them,” cried Miss Thusa, good-naturedly, repairing the mischief her pupil had done.

“Do you know the sun is down?” asked Arthur, “and that your path lies through the woods?”

Helen started, and for the first time became aware that the shadows of twilight were deepening on the landscape. She did not think Arthur Hazleton would accompany her home. He would test her courage as he had done before, and taking a hurried leave of Miss Thusa, promising to stay and hear many a legend next time, she jumped over the stile before Arthur could overtake her and assist her steps.

“Would you prefer walking alone?” said Arthur, “or will you accept of my escort?”

“I did not think you intended coming with me,” said Helen, “or I would have waited.”

“You thought me as rude and barbarous as ever.”

“Perhaps you think me as foolish and timid as ever.”

“You have become courageous and fearless then—I congratulate you—I told you that you would one day be a heroine.”

“That day will never come,” said Helen, blushing. “My fears are hydras—as fast as one is destroyed another is born. Shadows will always be peopled with phantoms, and darkness is to me the shadow of the grave.”

“I am sorry to hear you say so, Helen,” said the young doctor, taking her hand, and leading her along the shadowy path, “and yet you feel safe with me. You fear not when I am with you.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Helen, involuntarily drawing nearer to him—“I never fear in your presence. Midnight would seem noonday, and all phantoms flee away.”

“And yet, Helen,” he cried, “you have a friend always near, stronger to protect than legions of angels can be. Do you realize this truth?”

“I trust, I believe I do,” answered Helen, looking upward into the dome of darkening blue that seemed resting upon the tall, dark pillars of the woods. “I sometimes think if I were really exposed to a great danger, I could brave it without shrinking—or if danger impended over one I loved, I should forget all selfish apprehensions. Try not to judge me too severely—and I will do my best to correct the faults of my childhood.”

They walked on in silence a few moments, for there was something hushing in the soft murmurs of the branches, something like the distant roaring of the ocean surge.

“I must take Alice home to-morrow,” said he, at length; “her mother longs to behold her. I wish you were going with her. I fear you will not be happy here.”

“I cannot leave my father,” said Helen, sadly, “and if I can only keep out of the way of other people’s happiness, I will try to be content.”

“May I speak to you freely, Helen, as I did several years ago? May I counsel you as a friend—guide you as a brother still?”

“It is all that I wished—more than I dared to ask. I only fear that I shall give you too much trouble.”

There was a gray, old rock by the way-side, that looked exactly as if it belonged to Miss Thusa’s establishment. Arthur Hazleton seated Helen there, and threw himself on the moss at her feet.

“I am going away to-morrow,” said he, “and I feel as if I had much to say. I leave you exposed to temptation; and to put you on your guard, I must say perhaps what you will think unauthorized. You know so little of the world—are so guileless and unsuspecting—I cannot bear to alarm your simplicity; and yet, Helen, you cannot always remain a child.”

“Oh, I wish I could,” she exclaimed; “I cannot bear the thought of being otherwise. As long as I am a child, I shall be caressed, cherished, and forgiven for all my faults. I never shall be able to act on my own responsibility—never.”

“But, Helen, you have attained the stature of womanhood. You are looked upon as a candidate for admiration—as the rival of your beautiful sister. You will be flattered and courted, not as a child, but as a woman. The young man who has become, as it were, domesticated in your family, has extraordinary personal attractions, and every member of the household appears to have yielded to his influence. Were I as sure of his moral worth as of his outward graces, I would not say what I have done. But, with one doubt on my mind, as your early friend, as the self-elected guardian of your happiness, I cannot forbear to caution, to admonish, perhaps to displease, by my too watchful, too officious friendship.”

Arthur paused. His voice had become agitated and his manner excited.

“You cannot believe me capable of the meanness of envy,” he added. “Were Bryant Clinton less handsome, less fascinating, his sincerity and truth might be a question of less moment.”

“How could you envy any one,” cried Helen, earnestly, unconscious how much her words and manner expressed. “Displeased! Oh! I thank you so much. But indeed I do not admire Mr. Bryant Clinton at all. He is entirely too handsome and dazzling. I do not like that long, curling, shining hair of his. The first time I saw him, it reminded me of the undulations of that terrible snake in the strawberry patch, and I cannot get over the association. Then he does not admire me at all, only as the sister of Mittie.”

“He has paid Mittie very great and peculiar attention, and people look upon them as betrothed lovers. Were you to become an object of jealousy to her, you would be very, very unhappy. The pleasure of gratified vanity would be faint to the stings exasperated and wounded love could inflict.”

“For all the universe could offer I would not be my sister’s rival,” cried Helen, rising impetuously, and looking round her with a wild startled expression. “I will go and tell her so at once. I will ask her to confide in me and trust me. I will go away if she wishes it. If my father is willing, I will live with Miss Thusa in the wild woods.”

“Wait awhile,” said Arthur, smiling at her vehemence, “wait Helen, patiently, firmly. When temptations arise, it is time to resist. I fear I have done wrong in giving premature warning, but the impulse was irresistible, in the silence of these twilight woods.”

Helen looked up through the soft shadows to thank him again for his counsels, and promise that they should be the guide of her life, but the words died on her lips. There was something so darkly penetrating in the expression of his countenance, so earnest, yet troubled, so opposite to its usual serene gravity, that it infected her. Her heart beat violently, and for the first time in her life she felt embarrassed in his presence.

That night Helen pressed a wakeful pillow. She felt many years older than when she rose in the morning, for the experience of the day had been so oppressive. She could not realize that she had thought and felt and learned so much in twelve short hours.

CHAPTER IX.

“Oh! sister!” she cried, “I am so glad you have come. It is so long since we have slept together. I have been thinking how happy we can be, where so much has been done for our comfort and luxury.”

“You can enjoy all the luxuries yourself,” said Mittie, “and be welcome to them all. I am going to sleep in the next room, for I prefer being alone, as I have been before.”

“Oh! Mittie, you are not going to leave me alone; you will not, surely, be so unkind?”

“I wonder if I were not left alone, while Alice was with you, and I wonder if I complained of unkindness!”

“But you did not care. You are not dependent on others. I am sure if you had asked me, I would have spread a pallet on the floor, rather than have left you alone.”

“Helen, you are too old now to be such a baby,” said Mittie, impatiently; “it is time you were cured of your foolish fears of being alone. You make yourself perfectly ridiculous by such nonsense.”

She busied herself gathering her night-clothes as she spoke, and took the lamp from the table.

Helen sprang from the bed, and stood between Mittie and the door.

“No,” said she, “if we must separate, I will go. You need not leave the chamber which has so long been yours. I do dread being alone, but alas! I must be lonely wherever I am, unless I have a heart to lean upon. Oh! Mittie, if you knew how I could love you, you would let me throw my arms around you, and find a pillow on your sisterly breast.”

She looked pleadingly, wistfully at Mittie, while tears glittered in her soft, earnest eyes.

“Foolish, foolish child!” cried Mittie, setting down the lamp petulantly, and tossing her night-dress on the bed—“stay where you are, but do not inflict too much sentiment on me—you know I never liked it.”

“No,” said Helen, thoughtfully, “I might disturb you, and perhaps if I once conquer my timidity, I shall be victor for life. I should like to make the trial, and I may as well begin to-night as any time. I do not wish to be troublesome, or intrude my company on any one.”

Helen’s gentle spirit was roused by the arbitrary manner in which Mittie had treated her, and she found courage to act as her better judgment approved. She was sorry she had pleaded so earnestly for what she might have claimed as a right, and resolved to leave her sister to the solitude she so much coveted.

With a low, but cold “good night,” she glided from the apartment, closed the door, passed through the passage, entered a lonely chamber, and kneeling down by the bedside, prayed to be delivered from the bondage of fear, and the haunting phantoms of her own imagination. When she laid her head upon the pillow, she felt strong in the resolution she had exercised, glad that she had dared to resist her own weak, irresolute heart. She drew aside the window curtains and let the stars shine down brightly on her face. How could she feel alone, with such a glorious company all round and about her? How could she fear, when so many radiant lamps were lighted to disperse the darkness? Gradually the quick beating of her heart subsided, the moistened lashes shut down over her dazzled eyes, and she slept quietly till the breaking of morn. When she awoke, and recalled the struggles she had gone through, she rejoiced at the conquest she had obtained over herself. She was sure if Arthur Hazleton knew it, he would approve of her conduct, and she was glad that she cherished no vindictive feelings towards Mittie.

“She certainly has a right to her preferences,” she said; “if she likes solitude, I ought not to blame her for seeking it, and I dare say my company is dull and insipid to her. I must have seemed weak and foolish to her, she who never knew what fear or weakness is.”

As she was leaving her room, with many a vivid resolution to conquer her besetting weaknesses, her step-mother entered, unconscious that the chamber had an occupant. She looked around with surprise, and Helen feared, with displeasure.

“Mittie preferred sleeping alone,” she hastened to say, “and I thought she had a prior right to the other apartment.”

“Selfish, selfish to the heart’s core!” ejaculated Mrs. Gleason. “But, my dear child, I cannot allow you to be the victim of an arbitrary will. The more you yield, the more concessions will be required. You know not, dream not, of Mittie’s imperious and exacting nature.”

“I begin to believe, dear mother, that the discipline we most need, we receive. I did feel very unhappy last night, and when I entered this room, the dread of remaining all alone, in darkness and silence, almost stopped the beatings of my heart. It was the first time I ever passed a night without some companion, for every one has indulged my weakness, which they believed constitutional. But after the first few moments—a sense of God’s presence and protection, of the guardianship of angels, of the nearness of Heaven, hushed all my fears, and filled me with a kind of divine tranquillity. Oh! mother, I feel so much better this morning for the trial, that I thank Mittie for having cast me, as it were, on the bosom of God.”

“With such a spirit, Helen,” said her step-mother, tenderly embracing her, “you will be able to meet whatever trials the discipline of your life may need. Self-reliance and God-reliance are the two great principles that must sustain us. We must do our duty, and leave the result to Providence. And, believe me, Helen, it is a species of ingratitude to suffer ourselves to be made unhappy by the faults of others, for which we are not responsible, when blessings are clustering richly round us.”

Helen felt strengthened by the affectionate counsels of her step-mother, and did not allow the cloud on Mittie’s brow to dim the sunshine of hers. Mindful of the warnings of the young doctor, she avoided Clinton as much as possible, whose deep blue eyes with their long sable lashes often rested on her with an expression she could not define, and which she shrunk from meeting. True to her promise she visited Miss Thusa once a day, and took her spinning lessons, till she could turn the wheel like a fairy, and manufacture thread as smooth and silky as her venerable teacher. She insisted on bleaching it also, and flew about among the long grass, with her bright watering pot, like a living flower sprung up in the wilderness.

She was returning one evening from the cabin at a rather later hour than usual, for she was becoming more and more courageous, and could walk through the woods without starting at every sound. The trees were now beginning to assume the magnificent hues of autumn, and glowed with mingled scarlet, orange, emerald, and purple. There was such a brightness, such a glory in these variegated dyes, that they took away all impression of loneliness, and the crumpling of the dry, yellow leaves in the path had a sociable, pleasant sound. She hoped Arthur Hazleton would return before this jewelry of the woods had faded away, that she might walk with him through their gorgeous foliage, and hear from his lips the deep moral of the waning season. She reached the gray rock where Arthur had seated her, and sitting down on a thick cushion of fallen leaves, she remembered every word he had said to her the evening before his departure.

“Why are you sitting so mute and lonely here, fair Helen?” said a musical voice close to her ear, and Clinton suddenly came and took a seat by her side. Helen felt embarrassed by his unexpected presence, and wished that she could free herself from it without rudeness.

“I am gazing on the beauty of the autumnal woods,” she replied, her cheeks glowing like the scarlet maple leaves.

“I should think such contemplation better fitted one less young and bright and fair,” said Clinton. “Miss Thusa, for instance, in her time-gray home.

“I am sure nothing can be brighter or more glorious than these colors,” said Helen, making a motion to rise. It seemed to her she could see the black eyes of Mittie gleaming at her through the rustling foliage.

“Do not go yet,” said Clinton. “This is such a sweet, quiet hour—and it is the first time I have seen you alone since the morning after your arrival. What have I done that you shun me as an enemy, and refuse me the slightest token of confidence and regard?”

“I am not conscious of showing such great avoidance,” said Helen, more and more embarrassed. “I am so much of a stranger, and it seemed so natural that you should prefer the society of Mittie, I considered my absence a favor to both.”

“Till you came,” he replied, in a low, persuasive accent, “I did find a charm in her society unknown before, but now I feel every thought and feeling and hope turned into a new channel. Even before you came, I felt you were to be my destiny. Stay, Helen, you shall not leave me till I have told you what my single heart is too narrow to contain.”

“Let me go,” cried Helen, struggling to release the hand which he had taken, and springing from her rocky seat. “It is not right to talk to me in this manner, and I will not hear you. It is false to Mittie, and insulting to me.”

“I should be false to Mittie should I pretend to love her now, when my whole heart and soul are yours,” exclaimed the young man, vehemently. “I can no more resist the impulse that draws me to you, than I can stay the beatings of this wildly throbbing heart. Love, Helen, cannot be forced, neither can it be restrained.”

“I know nothing of love,” cried Helen, pressing on her homeward path, with a terror she dared not betray, “nor do I wish to know—but one thing I do know—I feel nothing but dread in your presence. You make me wretched and miserable. I am sure if you have the feelings of a gentleman you will leave me after telling you this.”

“The more you urge me to flee, the more firmly am I rooted to your side. You do not know your own heart, Helen. You are so young and guileless. It is not dread of me, but your sister’s displeasure that makes you tremble with fear. You cannot fear me, Helen—you must, you will, you shall love me.”

Helen was now wrought up to a pitch of excitement and terror that was perfectly uncontrollable. Every word uttered by Clinton seemed burned in—on her brain, not her heart, and she pressed both hands on her forehead, as if to put out the flame.

“Oh! that Arthur Hazleton were here,” she exclaimed, “he would protect me.”

“No danger shall reach you while I am near you, Helen,” cried Clinton, again endeavoring to take her hand in his—but Helen darted into a side path and ran as fleetly and wildly as when she believed the glittering, fiery-eyed viper was pursuing her. Sometimes she caught hold of the slender trunk of a tree to give her a quicker momentum, and sometimes she sprang over brooklets, which, in a calmer moment, she would have deemed impossible. She felt that Clinton had slackened his pursuit as she drew near her home, but she never paused till she found herself in her own chamber, where, sinking into a chair, she burst into a passion of tears such as she had never wept before. Shame, dread, resentment, fear—all pressed so crushingly upon her, her soul was bowed even to the dust. The future lowered so darkly before her. Mittie—she could not help looking upon her as a kind of avenging spirit—that would forever haunt her.

While she was in this state of ungovernable emotion, Mittie came in, with a face as white and rigid as marble, and stood directly in front of her.

“Why have you fled from Clinton so?” she cried, in a strange, harsh tone. “Tell me, for I will know. Tell me, for I have a right to know.”

Helen tried to speak, but her breathless lips sought in vain to utter a sound. There was a bright, red spot in the centre of both cheeks, but the rest of her face was as colorless as Mittie’s.

“Speak,” cried Mittie, stamping her foot, with an imperious gesture, “and tell me the truth, or you had better never have been born.”

“Ask me nothing,” she said at length, recovering breath to answer, “for the truth will only make you wretched.”

“What has he said to you?” repeated Mittie, seizing the arm of Helen with a force of which she was not aware. “Have you dared to let him talk to you about love?”

“Alas! I want not his love. I believe him not,” cried Helen; “and, oh! Mittie, trust him not. Think of him no more. He does not love you—is not worthy of you.”

Mittie tossed Helen’s arm from her with a violence that made her writhe with pain—while her eyes flashed with the bale-fires of passion.

“How dare you tell me such a falsehood?” she exclaimed, “you little, artful, consummate hypocrite. He never told you this. You have been trying to supplant me from the moment of your arrival, trying to make yourself appear a victim, a saint—a martyr to a sister’s jealous and exciting temper. I have seen it all. I have watched the whole, day after day. I have seen you stealing off to Miss Thusa’s—pretending to love that horrible old woman—only that you might have clandestine meetings with Clinton. And now you are seeking to shake my confidence in his faith and truth, that you may alienate him more completely from me.”

“Oh! Mittie—don’t,” cried Helen, “don’t for Heaven’s sake, talk so dreadfully. You don’t mean what you say. You don’t know what you are doing.”

“I tell you I do know—and you shall know to your cost, you little wolf in lamb’s clothing,” cried Mittie, growing more and more frantic as she yielded to the violence of her passions. “It was not enough, was it, to wind yourself round the young doctor with your subtle, childish ways, till you have made a fool of him with all his wisdom, treating him with a forwardness and familiarity that ought to make you blush at the remembrance—but you must come between me and the only being this side of Heaven I ever cared for? Take care of yourself; get out of my way, for I am growing mad. The sight of you makes me a maniac.”

Helen was indeed terrified at an exhibition of temper so unparalleled. She rose, though her limbs trembled so she could scarcely walk, and took two or three steps towards the door.

“Where are you going?” exclaimed Mittie.

“You told me to leave you,” said Helen, faintly, “and indeed I cannot stay—I ought not to stay, and hear such false and cruel things. I will not stay,” she exclaimed, with a sudden and startling flash of indignation; “I will not stay to be so insulted and trampled on. Let me pass.”

“You shall not go to Clinton.”

“Let me pass, I say,” cried Helen, with a wild vehemence, that contrasted fearfully with her usual gentleness. “I am afraid of you, with such daggers in your tongue.”

She rushed passed Mittie, flew down stairs, into the sitting room, in the presence of her father, step-mother, and Clinton, who was sitting as if perfectly unconscious of the tempest he had roused.

“Father, father,” she exclaimed, throwing herself into his arms. “Oh, father.”

Nothing could be more startling than her appearance. The bright spot on her cheek was now deepened to purple, and her eyes had a strange, feverish lustre.

“Why, what is the meaning of this?” cried Mr. Gleason, turning in alarm to his wife.

“Something must have terrified her—only feel of her hands, they are as cold as ice; and look at her cheeks.”

“She seems ill, very ill,” observed Clinton, rising, much agitated; “shall I go for a physician?”

“I fear Doctor Hazleton is not yet returned,” said Mrs. Gleason, anxiously. “I think she is indeed ill—alarmingly so.”

“No, no,” cried Helen, clinging closer to her father, “don’t send for Doctor Hazleton—anybody in the world but him. I cannot see him.”

“How strange,” exclaimed Mr. Gleason, “she must be getting delirious. You had better carry her up stairs,” added he, turning to his wife, “and do something to relieve her, while I go for some medical advice. She is subject to sudden nervous attacks.”

“No, no,” cried Helen, still more vehemently, “don’t take me up stairs; I cannot go back; it would kill me. Only let me stay with you.”

Mr. Gleason, who well remembered the terrible fright Helen had suffered in her childhood—her fainting over her mother’s corpse—her imprisonment in the lonely school-house—believed that she had received some sudden shock inflicted by a phantom of her own imagination. Her frantic opposition to being taken up stairs confirmed this belief, and he insisted on his wife’s conveying her to her own room and giving her an anodyne. Clinton felt as if his presence must be intrusive, and left the room—but he divined the cause of Helen’s strange emotion. He heard a quick, passionate tread overhead, and he well knew what the lion-strength of Mittie’s unchained passions must be.

Mrs. Gleason, too, had her suspicions of the truth, having seen Helen’s homeward flight, and heard the voice of Mittie soon afterwards in loud and angry tones. She besought her husband to leave her to her care, assuring him that all she needed was perfect quietude. For more than an hour Mrs. Gleason sat by the side of Helen, holding her hands in one of hers, while she bathed with the other her throbbing temples. Gradually the deep, purple flush faded to a pale hue, and her eyes gently closed. The step-mother thought she slept, and darkened the window—so that the rays of the young moon could not glimmer through the casement. Mrs. Gleason looked upon Helen with anguish, seeing before her so much misery in consequence of her sister’s jealous and irascible temper. She sighed for the departure of Clinton, whose coming had roused Mittie to such terrible life, and whose fascinations might be deadly to the peace of Helen. She could see no remedy to the evils which every day might increase—for she knew by long experience the indomitable nature of Mittie’s temper.

“Mother,” said Helen, softly, opening her eyes, “I do not sleep, but I rest, and it is so sweet—I feel as if I had been out in a terrible storm—so shattered and so bruised within. Oh! mother, you cannot think of the shameful accusations she has brought against me. It makes me shudder to think of them. I shall never, never be happy again. They will always be ringing in my ears—always blistering and burning me.”

“You should not think her words of such consequence,” said Mrs. Gleason, soothingly; “nothing she can say can soil the purity of your nature, or alienate the affections of your friends. She is a most unhappy girl, doomed, I fear, to be the curse of this otherwise happy household.”

“I cannot live so,” cried Helen, clasping her hands entreatingly, “I would rather die than live in such strife and shame. It makes me wicked and passionate. I cannot help feeling hatred rising in my bosom, and then I loathe myself in dust and ashes. Oh! let me go somewhere, where I may be at peace—anywhere in the world where I shall be in nobody’s way. Ask father to send me back to school—I am young enough, and shall be years yet; or I should like to go into a nunnery, that must be such a peaceful place. No stormy passions—no dark, bosom strife.”

“No, my dear, we are not going to give up you, the joy and idol of our hearts. You shall not be the sacrifice; I will shield you henceforth from the violence of this lawless girl. Tell me all the events of this evening, Helen, without reserve. Let there be perfect confidence between us, or we are all lost.”

Then Helen, though with many a painful and burning blush, told of her interview with Clinton, and all of which Mittie had so frantically accused her.

“When I rushed down stairs, I did not know what I was doing—my brain seemed on fire, and I thought my reason was gone. If I could find a place of shelter from her wrath, a spot where her eye could not blaze upon me! that was my only thought.”

“Oh! that this dangerous, and I fear, unprincipled young man had never entered our household!” cried Mrs. Gleason; “and yet I would not judge him too harshly. Mittie’s admiration, from the first, was only too manifest, and he must have seen before you arrived, the extraordinary defects of her temper. That he should prefer you, after having seen and known you, seems so natural, I cannot help pitying, while I blame him. If it were possible to accelerate his departure—I must consult with Mr. Gleason, for something must be done to restore the lost peace of the family.”

“Let me go, dear mother, and all may yet be well.”

“If you would indeed like to visit the Parsonage, and remain till this dark storm subsides, it might perhaps be judicious.”

“Not the Parsonage—never, never again shall I be embosomed in its hallowed shades—I would not go there now, for ten thousand worlds.”

“It is wrong, Helen, to allow the words of one, insane with passion, to have the least influence on the feelings or conduct. Mrs. Hazleton, Arthur, and Alice, have been your best and truest friends, and you must not allow yourself to be alienated from them.”

Helen closed her eyes to hide the tears that gathered on their surface, and it was not long before she sunk into a deep sleep. She had indeed received a terrible shock, and one from which her nerves would long vibrate.

The first time a young girl listens to the language of love, even if it steals into her heart gently and soothingly as the sweet south wind, wakening the sleeping fragrance of a thousand bosom flowers, every feeling flutters and trembles like the leaves of the mimosa, and recoils from the slightest contact. But when she is forced suddenly and rudely to hear the accents of passion, with which she associates the idea of guilt, and treachery, and shame, she feels as if some robber had broken into the temple consecrated to the purest, most innocent emotions, and stolen the golden treasures hidden there. This alone was sufficient to wound and terrify the young and sensitive Helen, but when her sister assailed her with such a temper of wrathful accusations, accusations so shameful and degrading, it is not strange that she was wrought up to the state of partial frenzy which led her to rush to a father’s bosom for safety and repose.

And where was Mittie, the unhappy victim of her own wild, ungovernable passion?

She remained in her room with her door locked, seated at the window, looking out into the darkness, which was illuminated by the rays of a waxing moon. She could see the white bark of the beech tree, conspicuous among the other trees, and knowing the spot where the letters were carved, she imagined she could trace them all, and that they were the scarlet color of blood.

She had no light in her room, but feeling in her writing desk for the pen-knife, she stole down stairs the back way and took the path she had so often walked with Clinton. She was obliged to pass the room where Helen lay, and glancing in at the window when the curtain fluttered, she could see her pale, sad-looking face, and she did not like to look again. She knew she had wronged her, for the moment she had given utterance to her railing words, conscience told her they were false. This conviction, however, did not lessen the rancor and bitterness of her feelings. Hurrying on, she paused in front of the beech tree, and the cyphers glared Upon her as if seen through a magnifying glass—they looked so large and fiery. Opening her pen-knife, she smiled as a moonbeam glared on its keen, blue edge. Had any one seen the expression of her features, as she gazed at that shining, open blade, they would have shuddered, and trembled for her purpose.

With a quick, hurried motion, she began to cut the bark from round the letters, till they seemed to melt away into one large cavity. She knew that some one was coming behind her, and she knew, too, by a kind of intuition, that it was Clinton, but she did not pause in her work of destruction.

“Mittie! what are you doing?” he exclaimed. “Good Heavens!—give me that knife.”

As she threw up her right hand to elude his grasp, she saw the blood streaming from her fingers. She was not aware that she had cut herself. She suffered no pain. She gazed with pleasure on the flowing blood.

“Let me bind my handkerchief round the wound,” said Clinton, in a gentle, sympathizing voice. “You are really enough to drive one frantic.”

“Your handkerchief!” she exclaimed, in an accent of ineffable scorn. “I would put a bandage of fire round it as soon. Drive one frantic! I suppose your conduct must make one very calm, very cool and reasonable. But I can tell you, Bryant Clinton, that when you made me the plaything of your selfish and changing passions, you began a dangerous game. You thought me, perchance, a love-sick maiden, whose heart would break in silence and darkness, but you know me not. I will not suffer alone. If I sink into an abyss of wretchedness, it shall not be alone. I will drag down with me all who have part or lot in my misery and despair.”

Clinton’s eye quailed before the dark, passionate glance riveted upon him. The moon gave only a pale, doubtful lustre, and its reflection on her face was like the night-light on deep waters—a dark, quivering brightness, giving one an idea of beauty and splendor and danger. Her hair was loose and hung around her in black, massy folds, imparting an air of wild, tragic majesty to her figure. Twisting one of the sable tresses round her bleeding fingers, she pressed them against her heart.

“Mittie,” said Clinton. There was something remarkable in the voice of Clinton. Its lowest tones, and they were exceedingly low, were as distinct and clear as the notes of the most exquisitely tuned instrument. “Mittie! why have you wrought yourself up to this terrible pitch of passion? Yet why do I ask? I know but too well. I uttered a few words of gallant seeming to your young sister, which sent her flying like a startled deer through the woods. Your reproaches completed the work my folly began. Between us both we have frightened the poor child almost into spasms. Verily we have been much to blame.”

“Deceiver! you told her that you loved me no more. Deny it if you can.”

“I will neither assert nor deny any thing. If you have not sufficient confidence in my honor, and reliance on my truth to trust and believe me, my only answer to your reproaches shall be silence. Light indeed must be my hold on your heart, if a breath has power to shake it. The time has been—but, alas!—how sadly are you changed!”

“I changed!” repeated she. “Would to Heaven I could change!”

“Yes, changed. Be not angry, but hear me. Where is the softness, the womanly tenderness and grace that first enchanted me, forming as it did so bewitching a contrast with the dazzling splendor of your beauty? I did not know then that daggers were sheathed in your brilliant eyes, or that scorn lurked in those beautiful lips. Nay, interrupt me not. Where, I say, is the loving, trusting being I loved and adored? You watch me with the vigilance of hatred, the intensity of revenge. Every word and look have been misconstrued, every action warped and perverted by prejudice and passion. You are jealous, frantically jealous of a mere child, with whom I idly amused myself one passing moment. You have made your parents look coldly and suspiciously upon me. You have taught me a bitter lesson.”

Every drop of blood forsook the cheeks of Mittie. She felt as if she were congealing—so cold fell the words of Clinton on her burning heart.

“Then I have forever estranged you. You love me no longer!” said she, in a faint, husky voice.

“No, Mittie, I love you still. Constancy is one of the elements of my nature. But love no longer imparts happiness. The chain of gold is transformed to iron, and the links corrode and lacerate the heart. I feel that I have cast a cloud over the household, and it is necessary to depart. I go to-morrow, and may you recover that peace of which I have momentarily deprived you. I shall pass away from your memory like the pebble that ruffles a moment the face of the water then sinks, and is remembered no more.”

“What, going—going to-morrow?” she exclaimed, catching hold of his arm for support, for she felt sick and dizzy at the sudden annunciation.

“Yes!” he replied, drawing her arm through his, and retaining her hand, which was as cold as ice. “Your brother Louis will accompany me. It is meet that he should visit my Virginian home, since I have so long trespassed on the hospitality of his. Whether I ever return depends upon yourself. If my presence bring only discord and sorrow, it is better, far better, that I never look upon your face again. If you cannot trust me, let us part forever.”

They were now very near the house, very near a large tree, which had a rustic bench leaning against it. Its branches swept against the fence which enclosed Miss Thusa’s bleaching ground. The white arch of the bridge spanned the shadows that hung darkly over it. Mittie drew away her arm from Clinton and sank down upon the bench. She felt as if the roots of her heart were all drawing out, so intense was her anguish.

Clinton going away—probably never to return—going, too, cold, altered and estranged. It was in vain he breathed to her words of love, the loving spirit, the vitality was wanting. And this was the dissolving of her wild dreams of love—of her fair visions of felicity. But the keenest pang was imparted by the conviction that it was her own fault. He had told her so, dispassionately and deliberately. It was her own evil temper that had disenchanted him. It was her own dark passions which had destroyed the spell her beauty had wrapped around him.

What the warnings of a father, the admonitions of friends had failed to effect, a few words from the lips of Clinton had suddenly wrought. He had loved. He should love her once more—for she would be soft and gentle and womanly for his sake. She would be kind to Helen, and courteous to all. This flashing moment of introspection gave her a glimpse of her own heart which made her shudder. It was not, however, the sunlight of truth, growing brighter and brighter, that made the startling revelation; it was the lightning glare of excitement glancing into the dark abysses of passion, fiery and transitory, leaving behind a deeper, heavier gloom. Self-abased by the image on which she had been gazing, and subdued by the might of her grief, she covered her face with her hands and wept the bitterest tears that ever fell from the eyes of woman. They were drops of molten pride, hot and blistering, leaving the eyes blood-shot and dim. It was a strange thing to see the haughty Mittie weep. Clinton sat down beside her, and poured the oil of his smooth, seductive words on the troubled waves he had lashed into foam. Soft, low, and sad as the whispers of the autumn wind, his voice murmured in her ear, sad, for it breathed but of parting. She continued to weep, but her tears no longer flowed from the springs of agony.

“Mittie!” A sterner voice than that of Clinton’s breathed her name. “Mittie, you must come in, the night air is too damp.”

It was her father who spoke, of whose approach she was not aware. He spoke with an air of authority which he seldom assumed, and taking her hand, led her into the house.

All the father was moved within him, at the sight of his daughter’s tears. It was the first time that he had seen them flow, or at least he never remembered to have seen her weep. She had not wept when a child, by the bed of a dying mother—(and the tears of childhood are usually an ever-welling spring)—she had not wept over her grave—and now her bosom was laboring with ill-suppressed sobs. What power had blasted the granite rock that covered the fountain of her sensibilities?

He entreated her to confide in him, to tell him the cause of her anguish. If Clinton had been trifling with her happiness, he should not depart without feeling the weight of parental indignation.

“No man dare to trifle with my happiness!” she exclaimed. “Clinton dare not do it. Reserve your indignation for real wrongs. Wait till I ask redress. Have I not a right to weep, if I choose? Helen may shed oceans of tears, without being called to account. All I ask, all I pray for, is to be left alone.”

Thus the proud girl closed the avenues of sympathy and consolation, and shut herself up with her own corroding thoughts, for the transient feelings of humility and self-abasement had passed away with the low, sweet echoes of the voice of Clinton, leaving nothing but the sullen memory of her grief. And yet the hope that he still loved her was the vital spark that sustained and warmed her. His last words breathed so much of his early tenderness and devotion, his manner possessed all its wonted fascination.

A calm succeeded, if not peace.

CHAPTER X.

Now Bryant Clinton was gone, Mr. Gleason wondered at his own infatuation. No longer spell-bound by the magic of his eye, and the alluring grace of his manners, he could recall a thousand circumstances which had previously made no impression on his mind. He blamed himself for allowing Louis to continue in such close intimacy with one, of whose parentage and early history he knew nothing. He blamed himself still more, for permitting his daughter such unrestricted intercourse with a young man so dangerously attractive. He blamed himself still more, for consenting to the departure of his son with a companion, in whose principles he did not confide, and of whose integrity he had many doubts. Why had he suffered this young man to wind around the household in smooth and shining coils, insinuating himself deeper and deeper into the heart, and binding closer and closer the faculties which might condemn, and the will that might resist his sorcery?

He blushed one moment for his weakness, the next upbraided himself for the harshness of his judgment, for the uncharitableness of his conclusions. The first letter which he received from Louis, did not remove his apprehensions. He said Clinton had changed his plans. He did not intend to return immediately to Virginia, but to travel awhile first, and visit some friends, whom he had neglected for the charming home he had just quitted. Louis dwelt with eloquent diffuseness on the advantages of traveling with such a companion, of the fine opportunity he had of seeing something of the world, after leading the student’s monotonous and secluded life. Enclosed in this letter were bills of a large amount, contracted at college, of whose existence the father was perfectly unconscious. No reference was made to these, save in the postscript, most incoherent in expression, and written evidently with an unsteady hand. He begged his father to forgive him for having forgotten—the word forgotten was partially erased, and neglected substituted in its place—ah! Louis, Louis, you should have said feared to present to him before his departure. He threw himself upon the indulgence of a parent, who he knew would be as ready to pardon the errors, as he was able to understand the temptation to which youth was exposed, when deprived of parental guidance.

The letter dropped from Mr. Gleason’s hand. A dark cloud gathered on his brow. A sharp pain darted through his heart. His son, his ingenuous, noble, high-minded boy had deceived him—betrayed his confidence, and wasted, with the recklessness of a spendthrift, money to which he had no legitimate claims.

When Louis entered college, and during the whole course of his education there, Mr. Gleason had defrayed his necessary expenses, and supplied him liberally with spending money.

“Keep out of debt, my son,” was his constant advice. “In every unexpected emergency apply to me. Debt unnecessarily recurred is both dishonorable and disgraceful. When a boy contracts debts unknown to his parents, they are associated with shame and ruin. Beware of temptation.”

Mr. Gleason was not rich. He was engaged in merchandise, and had an income sufficient for the support of his family, sufficient to supply every want, and gratify every wish within the bounds of reason; but he had nothing to throw away, nothing to scatter broadcast beneath the ploughshare of ruin. He did not believe that Louis had fallen into disobedience and error without a guide in sin. Like Eve, he had been beguiled by a serpent, and he had eaten of the fruit of the tree of forbidden knowledge, whose taste

“Brought death into the world,
And all our woe!”

That serpent must be Clinton, that Lucifer, that son of the morning, that seeming angel of light. Thus, in the excitement of his anger, he condemned the young man, who, after all, might be innocent of all guile, and free from all transgression.

Crushing the papers in his hand, he saw a line which had escaped his eye before. It was this—

“I cannot tell you where to address me, as we are now on the wing. I shall write again soon.”

“So he places himself beyond the reach of admonition and recall,” thought Mr. Gleason. “Oh! Louis, had your mother lived, how would her heart have been wrung by the knowledge of your aberration from rectitude! And how will the kind and noble being who fills that mother’s place in our affections and home, mourn over her weak and degenerate boy.”

Yes! she did mourn, but not without hope. She had too much faith in the integrity of Louis to believe him capable of deliberate transgression. She knew his ardent temperament his convivial spirit, and did not think it strange that he should be led into temptation. He must not withdraw his confidence, because it had been once betrayed. Neither would she suffer so dark a cloud of suspicion to rest upon Clinton. It was unjust to suspect him, when he was surrounded by so many young, and doubtless, evil companions. She regretted Clinton’s sojourn among them, since it had had so unhappy an influence on Mittie, but it was cowardly to plunge a dagger into the back of one on whose face their hospitable smiles had so lately beamed. We have said that she had a small property of her own. She insisted upon drawing on this for the amount necessary to settle the bills of Louis. She had reserved it for the children’s use, and perhaps when Louis was made aware of the source whence pecuniary assistance came, he would blush for the drain, and shame would restrain him from future extravagance. Mr. Gleason listened, hoped and believed. The cloud lighted up, and if it did not entirely pass away, glimpses of sunshine were seen breaking through.

And this was the woman whom Mittie disdained to honor with the title of mother!

Helen had recovered from the double shock she had received the night previous to Clinton’s departure, but she was not the same Helen that she was before. Her childhood was gone. The flower leaves of her heart unfolded, not by the soft, genial sunshine, but torn open by the whirlwind’s power. Never more could she meet Arthur Hazleton with the innocent freedom which had made their intercourse so delightful. If he took her hand, she trembled and withdrew it. If she met his eye, she blushed and turned away her glance—that eye, which though it flashed not with the fires of passion, had such depth, and strength, and intensity in its expression. Her embarrassment was contagious, and constraint and reserve took the place of confidence and ingenuousness; like the semi-transparent drapery over a beautiful picture, which suffers the lineaments to be traced, while the warm coloring and brightness of life are chilled and obscured.

The sisters were as much estranged as if they were the inmates of different abodes. Mrs. Gleason had prepared a room for Helen adjoining her own, resolved she should be removed as far as possible from Mittie’s dagger tongue. Thus Mittie was left to the solitude she courted, and which no one seemed disposed to disturb. She remained the most of her time in her own chamber, seldom joining the family except at table, where she appeared more like a stranger than a daughter or a sister. She seemed to take no interest in any thing around her, nor did she seek to inspire any. She looked paler than formerly, and a purplish shade dimmed the brilliancy of her dazzling eyes.

“You look pale, my daughter,” her father would sometimes say. “I fear you are not well.”

“I am perfectly well,” she would answer, with a manner so cold and distant, sympathy was at once repelled.

“Will you not sit with us?” Mrs. Gleason would frequently ask, as she and Helen drew near the blazing fire, with their work-baskets or books, for winter was now abroad in the land. “Will you not read to us, or with us?”

“I prefer being in my own room,” was the invariable answer; and usually at night, when the curtains were let down, and the lamps lighted in the apartment, warm and glowing with the genialities and comforts of home, the young doctor would come in and occupy Mittie’s vacant seat. Notwithstanding the comparative coldness and reserve of Helen’s manners, his visits became more and more frequent. He seemed reconciled to the loss of the ingenuous, confiding child, since he had found in its stead the growing charms of womanhood.

Arthur was a fine reader. His voice had that minor key which touches the chords of tenderness and feeling—that voice so sweet at the fireside, so adapted to poetry and all deep and earnest thoughts. He did not read on like a machine, without pausing to make remark or criticism, but his beautiful, eloquent commentaries came in like the symphonies of an organ. He drew forth the latent enthusiasm of Helen, who, forgetting herself and Mittie’s withering accusations, expressed her sentiments with a grace, simplicity and fervor peculiar to herself. At the commencement of the evening she generally took her sewing from the basket, and her needle would flash and fly like a shooting arrow, but gradually her hands relaxed, the work fell into her lap, and yielding to the combined charms of genius and music, the divine music of the human voice, she gave herself up completely to the rapture of drinking in

“Those silver sounds, so soft, so dear,
The listener held her breath to hear.”

If Arthur lifted his eyes from the page, which he had a habit of doing, he was sure to encounter a glance of bright intelligence and thrilling sensibility, instantaneously withdrawn, and then he often lost his place, skipped over a paragraph, or read the same sentence a second time, while that rich mantling glow, so seldom seen on the cheek of manhood, stole slowly over his face.

These were happy evenings, and Helen could have exclaimed with little Frank in the primer, “Oh! that winter would last forever!” And yet there were times when she as well as her parents was oppressed with a weight of anxious sorrow that was almost insupportable, on account of Louis. He came not, he wrote not—and the only letter received from him had excited the most painful apprehensions for his moral safety. It contained shameful records of his past deviations from rectitude, and judging of the present by the past, they had every reason to fear that he had become an alien from virtue and home. Mr. Gleason seldom spoke of him, but his long fits of abstraction, the gloom of his brow, and the inquietude of his eye, betrayed the anxiety and grief rankling within.

Helen knew not the contents of her brother’s letter, nor the secret cause of grief that preyed on her father’s mind, but his absence and silence were trials over which she openly and daily mourned with deep and increasing sorrow.

“We shall hear from him to-morrow. He will come to-morrow.” This was the nightly lullaby to her disappointed and murmuring heart.

Mittie likewise repeated to herself the same refrain “He will come to-morrow. He will write to-morrow.” But it was not of Louis that the prophecy was breathed. It was of another, who had become the one thought.

Helen had not forgotten her old friend Miss Thusa, whom the rigors of winter confined more closely than ever to her lonely cabin. Almost every day she visited her, and even if the ground were covered with snow, and icicles hung from the trees, there was a path through the woods, printed with fairy foot-tracks, that showed where Helen had walked. Mr. Gleason supplied the solitary spinster with wood ready out for the hearth, had her cottage banked with dark red tan, and furnished her with many comforts and luxuries. He never forgot her devoted attachment to his dead wife, who had commended to his care and kindness the lone woman on her dying bed. Mrs. Gleason frequently accompanied Helen in her visits, and as Miss Thusa said, “always came with full hands and left a full heart behind her.” Helen sometimes playfully asked her to tell her the history of the wheel so long promised, but she put her off with a shake of the head, saying—“she should hear it by and by, when the right time was at hand.”

“But when is the right time, Miss Thusa?” asked Helen. “I begin to think it is to-morrow.”

“To-morrow never comes,” replied Miss Thusa, solemnly, “but death does. When his footsteps cross the old stile and tramp over the mossy door-stones, I’ll tell you all about that ancient machine. It won’t do any good till then. You are too young yet. I feel better than I did in autumn, and may last longer than I thought I should—but, perhaps, when the ground thaws in the spring the old tree will loosen and fall—or break off suddenly near the root. I have seen such things in my day.”

“Oh! Miss Thusa,” said Helen, “I never want to hear any thing about it, if its history is to be bought so dear—indeed I do not.”

“Only if you should marry, child, before I die,” continued Miss Thusa, musingly, “you shall know then. It is not very probable that such will be the case; but it is astonishing how young girls shoot up into womanhood, now-a-days.”

“It will be a long time before I shall think of marrying, Miss Thusa,” answered Helen, laughing. “I believe I will live as you do, in a cottage of my own, with my wheel for companion and familiar friend.”

“It is not such as you that are born to live alone,” said the spinster, passing her hand lovingly over Helen’s fair, warm cheek. “You are a love-vine that must have something to grow upon. No, no—don’t talk in that way. It don’t sound natural. It don’t come from the heart. Now I was made to be by myself. I never saw the man I wanted to live one day with—much less all the days of my life. They may say this is sour grapes, and call me an old maid, but I don’t care for that; I must have my own way, and I know it is a strange one; and there never was a man created that didn’t want to have his. You laugh, child. I hope you will never find it out to your cost. But you havn’t any will of your own; so it will be all as it should be, after all.”

“Oh, yes I have, Miss Thusa; I like to have my own way as well as any one—when I think I am right.”

“What makes your cheeks redden so, and your heart flutter like a bird caught in a snare?” cried the spinster, looking thoughtfully, almost sorrowfully, into Helen’s soft, loving, hazel eyes. “That step doesn’t cross my threshold so often for nothing. You would know it in an army of ten thousand.”

The door opened and Arthur Hazleton entered. The day was cold, and a comfortable fire blazed in the chimney. The fire-beams that were reflected from Helen’s glowing cheek might account for its burning rose, for it even gave a warmer tint to Miss Thusa’s dark, gray form. Arthur drew his chair near Helen, who as usual occupied a little stool in the corner.

“What magnificent strings of coral you have, Miss Thusa?” said he, looking up to a triple garland of red peppers, strung on some of her own unbleached linen thread, and suspended over the fire-place. “I suppose they are more for ornament than use.”

“I never had any thing for ornament in my life,” said Miss Thusa. “I supply the whole neighborhood with peppers; and I do think a drink of pepper tea helps one powerfully to bear the winter’s cold.”

“I think I must make you my prime minister, Miss Thusa,” said the young doctor, “for I scarcely ever visit a patient, that I don’t find some traces of your benevolence, in the shape of balmy herbs and medicinal shrubs. How much good one can do in the world if they only think of it!”

“It is little good that I’ve ever done,” cried the spinster. “All my comfort is that I havn’t done a great deal of harm.”