So Sir Henry found himself _tête-à-tête_ with the lady for whom, during the foregoing winter, he had half-felt and half-professed a spurious kind of attachment, and was conscious of an uncomfortable wish that he, too, had made his escape with the others, or that it had never entered his head to come to tea at all. She was always gracious, just as she was always well-dressed. There is a dignity and a decency of beauty, which nothing will induce a beautiful woman to forego. It was a very cool and steady hand that Mrs. Lascelles tendered to her vacillating admirer, while she bade him sit down, and poured him out a cup of tea. "I was on the point of writing to you," said she; "but you have saved me the trouble. I wanted to see you, Sir Henry, very much. I have something particular to say." He bowed, and settled himself in a low easy-chair with his back to the windows. No faded beauty of the other sex could have entertained a greater objection than Sir Henry to flourishing "crow's-feet" and wrinkles in the light of day. "It's no wonder I'm here," was the smiling reply, "for I always want to see you!" "And without anything particular to say," she retorted, adding hurriedly--"However, that's not the point. Sir Henry, you care for your daughter?" "More than for anything in the world!" was his grave rejoinder. "I know it--I know it," she answered, and the colour deepened in her cheek. "Well, now, men are blind as bats, I think, in all matters of affection; but have you not lately noticed an alteration in Helen's manner, spirits, in her very looks? Can't you see there's something wrong with the girl? Can't you guess what it is?" He looked startled, disturbed, distressed. "Not the lungs, Mrs. Lascelles!" he exclaimed. "She runs up-stairs like a lap-wing, and will waltz for twenty minutes together at a spin. There can't be much amiss. Not her lungs, surely; nor her heart!" Mrs. Lascelles laughed. "Yes, her heart," she repeated, "though not in the sense _you_ mean. Not anatomically, but sentimentally, I fear; which is sometimes almost as bad." He looked immensely relieved. "Oh! she'll get over that," said he, putting more sugar in his tea. "She's a sensible girl, Helen, with a good deal of self-respect, and what I should call 'mind.' No whims, no fancies, in any way, and not the least romantic." "Like her papa," observed Mrs. Lascelles maliciously. "I trust in heaven _not_!" he replied, with unusual energy. "Helen is as much my superior in intellect as she is in moral qualities. She has talent, energy, self-control, and self-denial; none of which, I fear, can she inherit from _me_. Her sincerity, too, and trustfulness are like a child's, and she is as fond of me now as she was at two years old. You don't think she _really_ cares for anybody, do you, Mrs. Lascelles? It might be a serious thing for her if she did, and I had rather everything I have in the world went to ruin than that Helen should be made unhappy."