voice wavered now and then as if it would break altogether, her little figure swayed; but yet she stood firm, though she could not tell how she did it. The girls put down her trouble naturally to her father’s illness. They kissed her and whispered sympathy into her ears. “Du courage!” they said, with tears of tender pity and fellow-feeling. “If mamma could but come herself!” But they had no doubt that mamma could send something that would be of use. “It is the emotion of yesterday,” they concluded, with all the ease of spectators. And then Sir John had to be told the incident of yesterday and the goodness of monsieur. This was a blessed relief to Helen, whom he had begun to interrogate about Fareham and all she knew about it. “I suppose you did not know the last people that lived there? One of those great _nouveaux riches_, those men that live like princes on other people’s money. He turned out to be a swindl----” “Helen,” whispered Cécile, drawing her apart before the sentence was completed, “Est-ce qu’il te plaît? I want you to give me your most honest opinion. Je veux qu’il te plaît! Tell me exactly, exactly what you think--for you must like him,” said Sir John’s bride, with a pretty flush of impetuous eagerness. Thérèse, who had believed that she too would have had the same question to put, had surprised certain turns of the head--certain looks which Charley addressed to her friend--and she was curious beyond measure, and bursting with a thousand questions. When the visit was over poor Helen watched them go away, waving her hand to them from the door, keeping up her smile to the last moment. She did not lose the last suspicious glance of Sir John, who looked (accidentally) at her father’s window with all the force of an inquiry, but she scarcely got the comfort of Ashton’s anxious, tender look of sympathy which told all his story to Thérèse. She was at the end of her strength, but nevertheless, she had to rouse herself to go to her father, who wanted to know every particular of the interview. “I heard Harvey’s voice,” Mr Goulburn said. “There was always something objectionable in his voice. Big Philistine! Cécile de Vieux-bois is a great deal too good for him. He has dined with me dozens of times, but I think it was always in town, and at my club. He could not have any suspicion. Did he seem to you to have any suspicion, Helen?” “He had a great deal of suspicion, papa, but I don’t think he knew what he suspected. He can’t understand what we are doing here. Provided,” said Helen, with a little French idiom of which she was unconscious, “provided he does not come another time and take us unawares.” “He shall not take me unawares, you may trust to me, Helen; I shall not budge till the big brute is gone.”