He came back perplexed how to explain what seemed ungracious and ungrateful, and spoke with hesitating lip and flushed cheek of the widow’s natural timidity and sense of her own homely station. “And so overpowered is she,” added Leonard, “by the recollection of all that we owe to you, that she never hears your name without agitation or tears, and trembled like a leaf at the thought of seeing you.” “Ha!” said Harley, with visible emotion. “Is it so?” And he bent down, shading his face with his hand. “And,” he renewed, after a pause, but not looking up—“and you ascribe this fear of seeing me, this agitation at my name, solely to an exaggerated sense of—of the circumstances attending my acquaintance with yourself?” “And, perhaps, to a sort of shame that the mother of one you have made her proud of is but a peasant.” “That is all,” said Harley, earnestly, now looking up and fixing eyes in which stood tears, upon Leonard’s ingenuous brow. “Oh, my dear lord, what else can it be? Do not judge her harshly.” L’Estrange rose abruptly, pressed Leonard’s hand, muttered something not audible, and then drawing his young friend’s arm in his, led him into the garden, and turned the conversation back to its former topics. Leonard’s heart yearned to ask after Helen, and yet something withheld him from doing so, till, seeing Harley did not volunteer to speak of her, he could not resist his impulse. “And Helen—Miss Digby—is she much changed?” “Changed, no—yes; very much.” “Very much!” Leonard sighed. “I shall see her again?” “Certainly,” said Harley, in a tone of surprise. “How can you doubt it? And I reserve to you the pleasure of saying that you are renowned. You blush; well, I will say that for you. But you shall give her your books.” “She has not yet read them, then?—not the last? The first was not worthy of her attention,” said Leonard, disappointed. “She has only just arrived in England; and, though your books reached me in Germany, she was not then with me. When I have settled some business that will take me from town, I shall present you to her and my mother.” There was a certain embarrassment in Harley’s voice as he spoke; and, turning round abruptly, he exclaimed, “But you have shown poetry even here. I could not have conceived that so much beauty could be drawn from what appeared to me the most commonplace of all suburban gardens. Why, surely where that charming fountain now plays, stood the rude bench in which I read your verses.” “It is true; I wished to unite all together my happiest associations. I think I told you, my lord, in one of my letters, that I had owed a very happy, yet very struggling time in my boyhood to the singular kindness and generous instructions of a foreigner whom I served. This fountain is copied from one that I made in his garden, and by the margin of which many a summer day I have sat and dreamt of fame and knowledge.”