And with her peculiarly sensitive nature she felt, like a finely organized human barometer, the cold and chilling atmosphere of this mansion: and her spiritual mercury ran down to the zeros. A tall, grave man, with a clear-cut, beardless face and steel gray eyes, met them in the hall, "Welcome home, young ladies," he said, while the phantom of a smile played over his pale features, as a winter sunbeam falls on a marble statue. "I am glad to see you both. Dolores, child, you look pale; are you ill?" He took her hand, as he had taken Helena's, and he offered no more affectionate greeting, nor did Dolores. "No--I am well," she said, "only Daniel frightened me: he said you were very _un_well. You should have sent for me, Uncle, at once." "It was not necessary, child," replied her uncle, as he led them down the long hall and stood aside to let them pass up the broad stairway. "I have only been indisposed, as I always am in the Spring, you know. Why should I take you from your studies because my liver is refractory? But hasten, now, young ladies. You have only time to make your toilet before dinner is served." "I heard two robins chirping in a bare tree this morning," Mr. Laurence said, as the young ladies took their places at the table a little later. "That and your youthful voices in the lonely old hall just now, convinced me of the near approach of Springtime. Happy birds, and happy girls, I said. I wonder what the brief summer of life holds for you? "What is your dream of the future, Miss Maxon?" Finding this perplexing question addressed to her so suddenly, by an utter stranger, whose demeanor gave her a peculiar sensation of awe, Helena blushed, and hesitated for a reply. "I think I can answer for you," continued her host, without waiting for her to find voice. "It is a dream of pleasant duties, of culture and travel, of realized ambitions and labors rewarded, but all merging in the supreme hope of the unwise young heart--love and marriage; am I not right?" For a moment, Helena remained in abashed silence, the flush deepening upon her cheek. Then she lifted her soft dark eyes fearlessly to the old man's face, as she answered him: "I have never thought very seriously about my future," she said. "I am young to make plans. But whatever else it holds for me, I think it would be more complete at last to be crowned with love and marriage, if the love were true love and the marriage a happy one." Mr. Laurence shook his head as he murmured: "Ah! ah! poor child--poor foolish child! Better give up this thought at once. There is no true love between man and woman; there are no happy marriages; it is all a dream--a dream--and the awakening is cruel. Better put it all out of your mind now, child, before it is too late. Build your castle without the frail tower of love, else it will topple to the ground and carry the whole structure with it."