When Clinton accompanied Louis to his father's house, and beheld the beautiful Mittie, gilt, as he first saw her by the rays of the setting sun, he gave her the spontaneous homage which beauty ever received from him. He admired and for a little time imagined he loved her. But she was too easy a conquest to elate his vanity, and he soon wearied of her too exacting love. Helen, the shy, child-like, simple hearted Helen, baffled and interested him. She shunned and feared him, and therefore he pursued her with increasing fervor of feeling and earnestness of purpose. Finding himself terribly annoyed by Mittie's frantic jealousy, he resolved to absent himself awhile till the tempest he had raised was lulled, and urging Louis to be his companion, that he might have a plea for returning, departed, as has been described, not to his pretended home, but to haunts of guilty pleasure, where the deluded Louis followed, believing in his infatuation that he was only walking side by side with one sorely tempted, reluctantly transgressing, and as oft repenting as himself. With the native chivalry of his character, he refused to criminate his _friend_, and justify his father's anger. It was to Clinton _his debts of honor_ were chiefly due, and it was for this reason he shrunk from revealing them to his father. When Clinton found himself excluded from the presence of Helen, whose love he was resolved to win, his indignation and mortification were indescribable; but acknowledging no obstacles to his designs, he watched his opportunity and entered Miss Thusa's cabin, as we have related in the last chapter. He was no actor in that interview, for he really felt for Helen, emotions purer, deeper and stronger than he had ever before cherished for woman. He had likewise all the stimulus of rivalry, for he believed that Arthur Hazleton loved her, that calm, self-possessed and inscrutable being, whose dark, spirit-reaching eye his own had ever shunned. Helen's unaffected terror, her repulsion and flight were wormwood and gall to his pampered vanity and starving love. Her undisguised emotion at the mention of Arthur, convinced him of his ascendency over her heart, and the hopelessness of his present pursuit. Still he lingered near the spot, unwilling to relinquish an object that seemed more and more precious as the difficulty of obtaining it increased. He stood by the window, watching, at times, glimpses of Helen's sweet, yet troubled countenance, as the curtain flapped in the wintry wind. It was then he heard Miss Thusa relate the secret of her hidden wealth, and the demon of temptation whispered in his ear that the hidden gold might be his. Helen cared not for it--she knew not its value, she needed it not. Very likely when the wheel should come into her possession, and she examined its mystery, if the legacy were missing, she would believe its history the dream of an excited imagination, and think of it no more. He had never stolen, and it did