So thought Helen, while shrinking from the glance that gleamed upon her, like blue steel flashing in the sunbeams. Yes! Arthur Hazleton _was_ cold compared to Clinton. He loved her even as he did Alice, with a calm, brotherly affection, and that was all. He had never praised her beauty or attractions--never offered the slightest incense to her vanity or pride. Sometimes he had uttered indirect expressions, which had made her bosom throb wildly with hope, but humility soon chastened the emotion which delicacy taught her to conceal. Cold indeed sounded the warmest phrase he had ever addressed her, "God bless you, dear, good, brave Helen," to Clinton's romantic and impassioned language, though, when it fell from his lips, it passed with such melting warmth into her heart. Swift as a swallow's flight these thoughts darted through Helen's mind, and gave an indecision and embarrassment to her manner, which emboldened Clinton with hopes of success. All at once her countenance changed. The strangeness of her situation, the lateness of the hour, the impropriety of receiving such a visitor in that little dark, narrow passage--the dread of Arthur's coming in, and finding her alone with her dreaded though splendid companion--the fear that Miss Thusa might waken and require her assistance--the vision of her father's displeasure and Mittie's jealous wrath--all swept in a stormy gust before her, driving away every consideration but one--the desire for escape, and the determination to effect it. The apprehension of awaking Miss Thusa, by rushing into her room, died in the grasp of a greater terror. "Let me go," she exclaimed, wrenching her hand from his tightening hold. "Let me go. You madden me." In her haste to open the door the latch rattled, and the door swung to with a violence that called forth a groan from the awakening sleeper. Turning the wooden button that fastened it on the inside, she sunk down into the first seat in her reach, and a dark shadow, flecked with sparks of fire, floated before her eyes. Chill and dizzy, she thought she was going to faint, when her name, pronounced distinctly by Miss Thusa, recalled her bewildered senses. She rose, and it seemed as if the bed came to her, for she was not conscious of walking to it, but she found herself bending over the patient and looking steadfastly into her clouded eyes. "Helen, my dear," said she, "I feel a great deal better. I must have slept a long time. Have I not? Give me a little water. There, now sit down close by my bed and listen. If that knife cuts my breath again, I shall have to give up talking. Just raise my head a little, and hand me my spectacles off the big Bible. I can't talk without them. But how dim the glasses are. Wipe them for me, child. There's dust settled on them." Helen took the glasses and wiped them with her soft linen handkerchief, but she sighed as she did so, well knowing that it was the eyes that were growing dim instead of the crystal that covered them.