"Why, Mr. Raymond," said I gently, "I have nothing to do with Helen's going or staying. If you fear that I shall inform Mr. Floyd about what--what happened yesterday, you do me injustice. I shall tell him nothing. I have no right to say a word about anything that takes place in your house." "You are a good boy," said Mr. Raymond, with an expression of relief relaxing his convulsed features. "I do not wonder that James loves you as his own son--that it is the wish of his heart that you should grow up with Helen, learn to love her, and marry her at last." I listened doubtfully: it did not occur to me that his words had any foundation in fact; yet, all the same, the newly-suggested idea burdened me. "I think you are mistaken," said I gently. "Nothing of that kind could ever possibly happen." "Not for years--not until I am dead," returned Mr. Raymond peevishly. "It was nothing--nothing at all. All that occurred I will tell you, since I was foolish enough to speak of it in the first instance. James said he wanted Helen to be much with you. 'You know how those childish intimacies end,' I replied to him--'in deep attachment and desire for marriage.'--'I ask nothing better for Helen,' James exclaimed. 'She will grow up like other girls, and love, and finally become a wife; and if she became Floyd's wife I should have no fears for her.'" Mr. Raymond's eyes met mine. "You will never tell Mr. Floyd I spoke of this to you," he said under his breath. "I am not quite myself this morning, or I should not have suggested a thought of it to you." I was very sure that I should never mention it, for I found the idea of my marrying Helen so painfully irksome that it went with me all the day, casting a shadow across our intercourse. I told myself over and over that the idea was absurd--that such a thing could never, never come to pass. She was so mere a child. I studied her face with its baby contours, where nothing showed the dawn of womanhood yet except the great melancholy eyes; I took her hand in mine, where it lay like a snowflake on my brown palm; and I laughed aloud at the grotesqueness of the fancy that I should ever put a ring on that childish finger. "Why do you laugh?" she asked me wonderingly. "To think," I rejoined, "how funny it is to remember one day you will be grown up and have rings upon your fingers." "Is that funny?" she asked. "Of course, if I live I shall grow up and be a woman. My mamma was married when she was only seventeen, and in seven years I shall be seventeen." I dropped her hand as if it had stung me. "I have all mamma's rings," she went on: "I have a drawerful of trinkets that mamma used to wear. When Georgy Lenox comes I shall give her a locket and a chain that are so very, very pretty they will be just right for her. Tell me more about her, Floyd."