The girl obeyed, and taking the note to the light, read aloud the words which the reader has already heard. Helen returned to the table, and wrote her hasty reply beneath; and then dismissing the maid, knelt down and prayed. Amongst other petitions was the request that God would pardon, reform, and bless her brother; and her thoughts naturally ran on, after she had done, to his future fate, and to the hopes of fortune which Mr. Carr had held out. She could not help thinking that his having been prevented from proceeding on his voyage just at the time that such a discovery was likely to take place, seemed like an interposition of Providence. Such a train of thought induced her to take out of the lower part of her dressing-case the picture of her grandfather, and compare it with that of her father, which had belonged originally to her mother, and which, since her mother's death, she had constantly worn round her neck, night and day. The latter portrait was an extremely small miniature in a gold case, surrounded by small brilliants; but it had been painted for her father in the times of his happiness and prosperity, by an artist who has not long been dead, but whose works are of high value still to all who possess them, and who was known in his own day by the name of Gentleman Shelley. His skilful hand had preserved the likeness in a size scarcely greater than that of a large ring, and in comparing the two pictures, the resemblance between the father and the son was extraordinary. Helen gazed on them for several minutes; her memory ran back to the past, and to the last looks of that father who had been taken from her at an hour when a father's care was most needful. No one can wonder that her eyes filled with tears; but feeling that it was in vain to indulge such sorrow, she extinguished the light and retired to bed, with her own heart free from guile, though crime, in various shapes, was hovering round--crime of one kind destined, by the wisdom and mercy of God, to disappoint another. She lay awake for some time, for from the bosom of Helen Barham had gone for ever that balmy peace which sheds the downy blessing on the eyes of childhood. Passion, the scarer of slumber, had taken possession of her bosom, and the lids that not a year before used to drop at the first invitation of repose, now refused to shut out busy waking thought from the troubled brain. At length, however, weariness overcame her, and after a deep-drawn sigh, she fell into profound sleep.