“Ah, mamma!” thought Helena, as she stood beside her mother’s bed, “you did not understand, and perhaps you did not believe me, when I said that I would not try to find out any thing that you wished me not to know. Now I hope you will _understand_ me better.” Lady Delacour opened her eyes: “Helena,” cried she, starting up, “how came you by that key?” “Oh, mother! don’t look as if you suspected me.” She then told her mother how the key came into her hands. “My dear child, you have done me an essential service,” said Lady Delacour: “you know not its importance, at least in my estimation. But what gives me infinitely more satisfaction, you have proved yourself worthy of my esteem--my love.” Marriott came into the room, and whispered a few words to her lady. “You may speak out, Marriott, before my Helena,” said Lady Delacour, rising from the bed as she spoke: “child as she is, Helena has deserved my confidence; and she shall be convinced that, where her mother has once reason to confide, she is incapable of suspicion. Wait here for a few minutes, my dear.” She went to her boudoir, paid and dismissed the surgeon expeditiously, then returned, and taking her daughter by the hand, she said, “You look all simplicity, my dear! I see you have no vulgar, school-girl curiosity. You will have all your mother’s strength of mind; may you never have any of her faults, or any of her misfortunes! I speak to you not as to a child, Helena, for you have reason far above your years; and you will remember what I now say to you as long as you live. You will possess talents, beauty, fortune; you will be admired, followed, and flattered, as I have been: but do not throw away your life as I have thrown away mine--to win the praise of fools. Had I used but half the talents I possess, as I hope you will use yours, I might have been an ornament to my sex--I might have been a Lady Anne Percival.” Here Lady Delacour’s voice failed; but commanding her emotion, she in a few moments went on speaking. “Choose your friends well, my dear daughter! It was my misfortune, my folly, early in life to connect myself with a woman, who under the name of frolic led me into every species of mischief. You are too young, too innocent, to hear the particulars of my history now; but you will hear them all at a proper time from my best friend, Miss Portman. I shall leave you to her care, my dear, when I die.” “When you die!--Oh, mother!” said Helena, “but why do you talk of dying?” and she threw her arms round her mother. “Gently, my love!” said Lady Delacour, shrinking back; and she seized this moment to explain to her daughter why she shrunk in this manner from her caresses, and why she talked of dying. Helena was excessively shocked.