The kindly tone in which he spoke encouraged Helen; and looking up in his face, she said, "This is a subject on which I much wish to speak to you, for I dare not tell my father. I did not see Lord Hadley, my dear uncle, for I went to my own room the moment I saw him coming, and ordered the maid to tell him, if he asked for me, that I _would not_ see him, in those plain terms." "Indeed!" exclaimed Norries, now much interested; "then he must have done something very wrong, Helen." "He has said things to me which I cannot repeat, my dear uncle," she replied, with a glowing face. "He wanted to persuade me to leave my father's house, and go away to London with him; and--and--he has behaved very ill to me, in short." "Did he dare?" exclaimed her uncle, with his eyes flashing, and his cheek turning red. "Your father must know this, Helen." "Oh, no, no!" cried Helen Clive; "I dare not tell him, indeed. I am sure if he knew all he would kill him on the spot. You know how very violent he is when he is made angry, and how angry he would be if he knew I had been insulted as I have been." "I do know it well, Helen," replied Norries, thoughtfully, "and I will acknowledge yours is a difficult position. You are no coquette, my dear child, to give this man any encouragement, even at the first, before he had shown himself in his true colours; and I feel sure you have done your best to keep him from the house." "Indeed I have," replied Helen Clive; "I have never liked him from the first, though I felt gratitude for the kindness which I received from him and his friend Mr. Dudley, and expressed it. But oh! how different has Mr. Dudley's conduct ever been. It was to him, indeed, I owed my safety, though the other was kind also at the time; but the very night when they had brought me here, he looked at me in a way--I cannot describe it--but it made me feel very uncomfortable." "And Mr. Dudley has been always kind?" asked her uncle. "I cannot tell you how kind," answered Helen. "His manner was so gentle, so like a gentleman; and he seemed to feel so much for me in every way, both when he was extricating me from the heap of stones and earth, and afterwards when I was anxious to let my father know what had happened, that I can never forget it; and then, when I saw him the day after, there was such a difference between his conduct and Lord Hadley's, that in any moment of danger I would have clung to him like a brother, while I shrunk from the other's very look. I did not know why then; but I know now."