Helen’s nature was of that mixed kind found mostly in women of her class, because its faults are mainly those created by position and false teachers. She was gifted with all the tenderness pertaining to a gentle, loving creature, but she possessed also an indomitable haughtiness which had been fostered and cultivated by her proud mother. Her self-will had been permitted to have its course until it grew into a tyranny, because her weak, proud parent believed it to be a symbol of high breeding. She ruled all beneath her with a lofty domination, taught by those who alone claimed control over her actions that such a line of conduct became the eldest daughter of an ancient house. All the soft and endearing qualities which she possessed were pressed back and allowed few opportunities of appearing; they did now and then peep forth, like a gleam of sunshine from a sky overspread with a cold austere pall, but it was only when nature rebelled, and would make a sign to show that they had not been slain outright by harsh conventional forms. Helen was at once high-minded, impassioned, and ambitious, but having given her self-will entire control she suffered impulses to govern her. Hence the whole of the circumstances which had transpired between her and Hugh Riversdale. She saw him and was struck with his handsome face and noble bearing, as he was by her beauty. He became the ardent wooer, but in secret. His burning looks, his fervid language, his tender adoration, created a new feeling in her breast. Love and passion sprang up in her soul together, and she suffered them to proceed in their course impetuously, without an attempt to arrest or check their career. Her mother and her instructors taking their cue from her father, had been more careful to instil into her mind the doctrines and practices of pride, than the precepts of religion or the practice of morality. She loved Hugh with all the fierceness of an ungovernable passion, and she let it have its way. They had met in secret, and the notion of having a secret pleased her--she kept it as such. It is just to her to say that she had no sense of having committed wrong, or any act of shame or sin. She had been from infancy taught and permitted to exercise her self-will, and she did it in this--with what result we have seen. A veil had now fallen from before her eyes; she saw whither her faults had hurried her, and she prepared to undergo the penance imposed upon her without shrinking from its rigour, or attempting to evade its obligations. In the hurry of her flight, she had not thought of the means of providing for the future, and save a few pounds which happened to be in her purse, she had brought no money with her. It suggested itself to her now that she would need more when the trifle she possessed was gone, but where was it to come from?