"Oh, is it possible!" cried she: "are you better really?" and she seemed as if to start away to convey the tidings to my mother; but I beckoned her to bend her head down towards me, and when she had done so, I thanked her, in a low voice, but with energetic words, for her care, her kindness, and for her love. Her blushing cheek was close to my lips, but sickness, which had rendered all my sensations morbidly acute, had also made my feelings of delicacy much more refined, and had given a degree of timidity I did not often otherwise feel. I would not for the world have taken advantage of the opportunity which her kindness and confidence afforded; and though, as I have said, her cheek, looking like the summer side of a blooming peach, was within the reach of my lips, I let her raise it without a touch, when I had poured forth my thanks into her ear; and I then suffered her to do her joyful errand to my mother, only venturing to tell her, ere she went, how much I loved, and how much I would love her to the end of my existence. A moment after, my mother returned herself, her eyes streaming with tears of joy; and, kneeling by my bedside, she covered my cheek with those fond maternal kisses, whose unmixed purity gives them a sweet and holy balm, which love with all its fire and brightness can seldom, seldom attain. My convalescence was tedious, and months elapsed before I regained anything like the robust health which I had formerly enjoyed. Months of sickness are very apt to make a spoilt child; and had I not lately received some lessons hard to be forgot, such might have been the case with me, when I saw the whole happiness of the three persons I myself loved best depending upon my slightest change of looks. My father's delight at my recovery was not less than my mother's; and every day that I met Helen, I could see her eye rest for an instant upon my face, as if to watch what progress returning health had made since the day before; and when, by chance it gained a deeper touch of red, or my eyes had acquired a ray of renewed fire, the happiness of her heart raised the blood into her cheek, and made her look a thousand times lovelier than ever. We now also met oftener than formerly. The ties which she had entwined round my mother's heart had been, during my illness, drawn more tightly than ever. That restraint no longer existed which had formerly proved so irksome to me; Helen was in every way treated as a child of the family; and, had she chosen it, might have yielded me many an hour of that private conversation which I was not remiss in seeking. But far from it; with an ingenuity, which mingled gentleness, perhaps even affection, with reserve, she avoided all opportunity of hearing what her heart forbade her to reprove, and to which she yet felt it wrong to listen.