I was half mad with baffled desire, blind anger and fatigue that night, and the sound of Helen's voice as she sang some song like a lullaby was like a blessing. My mother did not speak to me; only smiled gently in my face and kissed me on my forehead. Her tenderness touched my heart, and my head drooped to her shoulder, then to her lap, and I lay there like a boy comforted by his mother's touch, just as I was. A kind of peaceful stupor came over me. Helen went on singing some quiet German piece of which her father was fond, with many verses and a sweet, moving story. Her voice was delicious in its way, with a noble and simple style, and a pathetic charm in some of its cadences I never heard surpassed. Mr. Floyd never tired of hearing her. After a time the ballad came to an end. "Floyd has come, papa," I heard her say. "Why, no! Has he? so early?" "Go on singing, Helen," whispered my mother. "Floyd has gone to sleep." She sang something soft, cooing, monotonous, a strain a mother might sing as she hushed her baby at her breast: then she came out, followed by her father, and both sat down beside us. I, half shyly, half through dread of talking, went on counterfeiting sleep. "Poor boy!" exclaimed Mr. Floyd. "He has evidently walked back from the Point. He was tired out with his dissipations, or Miss Georgina was coquetting with other men or ate too much to suit him. If I were in love to extremity of passion with Miss Lenox, or rather with her brilliant flesh-tints and her hands and feet, I should recover the moment I saw her at table. She is the frankest gourmande I ever saw, and will be stout in five years." "Now, papa, Georgy's hands and feet are nothing so particular." "Helen's are smaller and much better shaped," said my mother jealously. "Now, Mary, how little you understand the points of a woman! Helen has hands that I kiss"--and he kissed them--"the most beautiful hands in the world; and she has feet whose very shoe-tie I adore; but, nevertheless, there is nothing aggressive about her insteps and ankles. She considers her feet made to walk with, not to captivate men with." "I should hope not," said Lady Disdain, with plenty of her chief attribute in her voice. "I prefer that nobody should know I have any feet." "That is just it. Now, Miss Lenox never comes in or goes out of a room but every man there knows the color of her stockings." "I am ashamed of you, papa!--Scold him, Mrs. Randolph. I think him quite horrid." "Since, my mouse, you don't want to be admired for your feet and hands, what points of your beauty may we venture to obtrude our notice upon?" "Oh, you may love me for whatever you like. But I don't want other people ever to think of me in that way at all." "Your intellect is a safe point, perhaps." "I do not want anybody to love me at all, papa, except yourself." "Not even Floyd?"