She was glad beyond description when, after much more conversation, and a meal to which his excitement and passion did not prevent him from doing a certain justice, Duff was got out of the house, leaving Helen behind, for whom the cart with the black pony had to be brought out once more. Helen was greatly exhausted by all the agitations of the day. He had left her without bringing her to any change of mind, yet vowing he would see her once again and make her come with him still, that he would not yet abandon all hope, while she sat tired out, shaking her head softly, with a melancholy smile on her face--a smile more pitiful than many complaints. She did not rise from her chair to see him go away, but followed him with wistful eyes to the door--eyes that were full of a dew of pain that flooded them, but did not fall. She did not say any thing for a long time after he had gone. Was she listening to his steps as he went away, leaving on the air a lingering sound, measured and heavy? Helen had thought that footstep like music. She had watched for it many a day, and heard it, as she thought, miles off, in the stillness of the long country roads, and again, in imagination, many and many a day when he was far out of hearing. She heard it now, long after it had been lost by every ear but her own. Her face had a strained look, as if that sound drew her after him, yet stronger resolution kept her behind. “You did not mean that, Helen--oh, not that!” Lily said, encircling her friend with her arm. “My bonnie Lily! but that I did, with all my heart!” “That you, a good woman, would go away out into the world with an ill man, knowing he was an ill man, and thinking that you could turn him and mend him! Oh, Helen, Helen! take him to your heart, that is pure as snow, knowing he was an ill man?” “Lily, you are very young--you are little more than a bairn. What are our small degrees of good and ill--or rather of ill and worse--before our Maker? Do you think he judges as we judge? They say my poor Alick is wild, and well I wot he is wild, and has taken many, many a wrong step on the road. Oh, if you think it presumptuous of me to believe I could have held him fast so that he should not fall, that would be more true! But, Lily, if ye were long in this countryside, you would see it with your own e’en. The women long ago were not so feared as we were. They just married the lad they liked, and if he were wild, forgave him; and I’ve known goodwives that have just pushed them through--oh, just pushed them through!--till they came to old age with honor on their heads and a fine family about them, that would have sunk into the miry pit and the horrible clay if the woman had not had the heart to do it. I am not saying I had not the heart,” said Helen, with a melancholy shake of her head, “but I was young and knew nothing, and the moment passed away.”