"Poor, poor Burley! He, too, is vanished out of my present life. I have made many inquiries after him; all I can hear is that he went abroad, supposed as a correspondent to some journal. I should like so much to see him again, now that perhaps I could help him as he helped me." "_Helped_ you--ah!" Leonard smiled with a beating heart, as he saw again the dear, prudent, warning look, and involuntarily drew closer to Helen. She seemed more restored to him and to her former self. "Helped me much by his instructions; more, perhaps, by his very faults. You cannot guess, Helen--I beg pardon, Miss Digby--but I forgot that we are no longer children: you cannot guess how much we men, and, more than all perhaps, we writers, whose task it is to unravel the web of human actions, owe even to our own past errors; and if we learned nothing by the errors of others, we should be dull indeed. We must know where the roads divide, and have marked where they lead to, before we can erect our sign-posts; and books are the sign-posts in human life." "Books!--And I have not yet read yours. And Lord L'Estrange tells me you are famous now. Yet you remember me still--the poor orphan child, whom you first saw weeping at her father's grave, and with whom you burdened your own young life, over-burdened already. No, still call me Helen--you must always be to me--a brother! Lord L'Estrange feels _that_; he said so to me when he told me that we were to meet again. He is so generous, so noble. Brother!" cried Helen, suddenly, and extending her hand, with a sweet but sublime look in her gentle face--"brother, we will never forfeit his esteem; we will both do our best to repay him! Will we not--say so?" Leonard felt overpowered by contending and unanalysed emotions. Touched almost to tears by the affectionate address--thrilled by the hand that pressed his own--and yet with a vague fear, a consciousness that something more than the words themselves was implied--something that checked all hope. And this word "brother," once so precious and so dear, why did he shrink from it now?--why could he not too say the sweet word "sister?" "She is above me now and evermore!" he thought, mournfully; and the tones of his voice, when he spoke again, were changed. The appeal to renewed intimacy but made him more distant; and to that appeal itself he made no direct answer; for Mrs Riccabocca, now turning round, and pointing to the cottage which came in view, with its picturesque gable-ends, cried out-- "But is that your house, Leonard? I never saw anything so pretty."