There were several men seated at the long table eating their breakfast when Helen and little Janey followed their father into the room; one or two others who had finished their meal were smoking their cigars--they were all talking in high voices, harsh to unaccustomed ears. The farther end, the only unoccupied place, was far from the window, and in a kind of twilight. Little Janey grasped her father’s hand tight till the little soft fingers almost hurt him. “Oh, take me away,” she cried, “take me away! I won’t do there. Take me home, papa--take me to my own home.” He took her in his arms and carried her to the quiet corner. “My little pet,” he said, “I wish I could; but it’s a long, long way off, Janey. You must try and be contented here.” “Oh, papa,” said the child, “I want to do home! I want to do home! I don’t like it here. I don’t like--nothing at all but--home.” “Janey, Janey!--speak to her, Helen. You will like it better after: the people are always very kind to you. And you are tired, my little love. You will like it better when you know----” “I want to do home!” cried Janey; but the sudden odour of the soup put under her nose wrought a revolution in her mind. “And I am so hungry,” she said, her tears drying up. She raised her head from her father’s shoulder where she had been past all consolation the moment before--and slid down from his knee. Ah! why is six so much more easy to console than eighteen? or eighteen than fifty? might be said in other circumstances. But in the present case the father and the little child had both regained their spirits, and it was only Helen whose heart lay like a lump of lead in her breast. That evening Mr Goulburn called her into the small room which he was to occupy, with an air of some embarrassment. There had been no sitting-room possible at Sainte-Barbe, yet it was practicable to occupy a corner in the _salle à manger_, when all was quiet there. But in the Lion d’Or at Latour it was never quiet. In the evening the villagers came in to consume slowly their sour _piquette_, or bitter _chope_, and fill the place with clouds of smoke; and the two crowded yet scantily furnished bedrooms, in which the strangers were lodged, were the only places in which they could talk. Mr Goulburn called Helen into his room. He was embarrassed, and did not know how to begin. Helen’s look of inquiry seemed to paralyse him. He stammered and hesitated and cleared his throat. At length he said, with the rapidity of one who is anxious to get over a painful operation, “I wanted to speak to you, Helen. There is one little matter: unnecessary to enter into my reasons for it. While we are here, I mean to call myself by my mother’s name, Harford, instead of Goulburn.” “Papa!” her pale countenance was suffused with the most violent colour. Pale, worn out, and weary as her looks had been a moment since, she was of the colour of passion now.