The two girls placed the lovely white flowers in her hair, laughing with delight, and clapping their hands as they drew back to gaze at their work; after which one of them went off to fetch a common hand-glass of European make, and held it before her face that she might, as they said, "see how beautiful they had made her now." Helen was too sick of heart and weary to do more than cast a cursory glance at the glass; but this was followed by another, and then she uttered an anguished cry, shrinking back and cowering down as if with dread as she covered her face with her hands. Fair Helen was fair no longer. Her face was as swarthy as that of the darkest Malay. VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER FOURTEEN. ANOTHER PRISONER. The awakening of the Reverend Arthur Rosebury was not very much unlike that of the other prisoners. He, too, seemed to have been carried a long distance blindfolded, both in boat and litter; and it all appeared like a continuation of the dream in which he had been plunged since he first met Helen Perowne. The hours he had spent in her company; the giving up of his little English home; his journey abroad; and his wild Eastern life, had all seemed dreamlike and strange; and it was quite, to his mind, in keeping therewith, that he should have been seized, blindfolded, and carried off by slaves for some reason or another; probably, he argued, because a rival was jealous of the favour in which he stood with Helen, who had only that night appointed him her special personal attendant. It was all quite consistent with Eastern life and romance, and did not strike him as being at all peculiar, for the fact remains that, while the Reverend Arthur Rosebury was exceedingly clever as a student, and quite a master in his own particular subjects, he was weak as water in worldly matters; and, as his sister too well knew, in many things little better than a child. Add to this that the Reverend Arthur was, for the first time in his life, and at middle age, hopelessly infatuated with Helen, and it is not surprising that his weakness was extreme. It was all, then, to him a matter of no wonderment, and he would have taken his position coolly enough had he been satisfied that Helen was not in danger. But of this he could not feel assured; and he was troubled in his dull, mild way accordingly. For love blinded him effectually to all Helen's failings. She was beautiful, and she had looked kindly, almost lovingly upon him, more than once, and those tender looks redeemed all else. She flirted, she coquetted with others; she treated him with marked indifference and contempt; but she had made him love her, and he was one of those who, without reward, would go on patiently loving until the end. He was a good deal troubled, then, in his own mind about Helen's fate, for he had seen that she was, like him, seized; but in the confusion that followed, what afterwards took place he could not tell.