“I think I know,” said the sagacious Hope. “What do you know, Hope?” said Helen. But Hope was perverse. “Helen, Miss Swinton is coming, but only for a day, and little Mary Wood is to stay all the vacation. Miss Swinton wants to see you, Helen, and she said she would take you to Edinburgh; but I think you should not go, Helen.” “Why?” Hope paused, and as she could think of no satisfactory answer, went on, on another course. “Helen, William is perhaps coming home--only for awhile; you don’t know how much William has to do now; and, Helen, people say he is clever. Do you think he is?” There was some pleasant moisture subduing the unusual brightness of Helen’s eyes. Her voice was lower than usual too, and the sensible Hope observed keenly. “No, Hope,” said Helen, with some tremor. “I think he is not clever. I think--” “I don’t care for that,” said Hope, bravely. “Are you going home, Helen? Will you let me go too? It is only other people who call him clever, you know, Helen; but he is _our_ William.” CHAPTER VII. “Werena my heart licht, I wad die.”--GRIZZEL BAILLIE. At the same bright hour of noon as that on which Helen set out so sadly, commissioned with her mother’s domestic errands, Lilias Maxwell sat in the sunshine upon the mossy steps of the old sun-dial in the garden of Mossgray. She had her work in her hand as usual, and was sewing listlessly, with long intervals of idleness. It was an occupation very ill-suited for her at that time, for there was nothing in it to deliver her from the sway of her own thoughts; and so she pursued the quiet work and the long trains of musing together, looking, as she always did, very pale and very sad. To-morrow--to-morrow was the day. The “soul of happy sound” surrounded her on every side, and she was faintly conscious of it; the drowsy stir of summer life, the hum of passing bees, the ripple of the water as it went on its way, plaintively, beyond the willows, softened by the warm medium of that sunny air through which they came, fell gently on her ear--perhaps they soothed her unawares; but we feel the solemn weight of our humanity more heavily when the heart of Nature throbs beside us in its spring joy, conscious of an inner world, whose revolutions and vicissitudes are of greater import to ourselves than all the happy changes of the earth. But as the old man looked out from the projecting turret-window, it pleased him to see where she was, and how she was employed--for Lilias was singing, and the sunshine stealing through the trees rested on her head. He could not catch the words, and scarcely the music of her song, but the gentle human voice mingled with the familiar cadence of the river, and the young head drooped in graceful meditation beneath the joyous skies of noon. He thought the cloud was beginning to break and disappear; he fancied that the youthful life was asserting its native elasticity, and he turned in to his books with his benign smile.