'There will be no need for my seeing Mr. Warren, will there?' said Helen, in a low voice, her face for the first time changing and assuming an expression of deep distress and anxiety. 'O Thornton, keep that from me if you can!' 'I don't foresee that there will be any necessity at all for your seeing him,' returned Thornton, 'if it is repugnant and unpleasant for you to do so; and I need not say that we will make every effort to extract such full information from him as to enable us to act without any further reference either of him or ourselves to you. You know that well, Helen, and therefore you will be prepared, in case we should find it indispensable to bring him in contact with you, to acquiesce in the necessity--will you not?' 'Of course I will. I have only asked you to spare if possible, and "if possible" means not at the expense of avenging my Alston. I will bear anything for that purpose, and few things could be more painful to me than an interview with Trenton Warren.' 'I think I know why,' was Mr. Duval's comment upon her words and her expression, spoken inwardly of course, and with the additional reflection that he had known few stronger situations, with more to be made out of them, than the present. 'What are you going to do for the rest of the day?' said Thornton Carey. 'Are you going to try to sleep?' 'No,' she replied; 'I have had enough of unnatural sleep, and natural sleep won't come to me just yet. I am going to see my child for a while, as long as I can bear it, and Miss Montressor has been good enough to promise to come to me.' 'Clara is a good soul,' said Bryan Duval parenthetically and heartily. 'Is she here now?' 'I think so,' said Mrs. Griswold. 'She promised Mrs. Jenkins that she would come early, and I fear that she has been detained. Now that this morning's work is over, you will not object, will you, Thornton,' she said, raising her eyes to him with a look of dependence and submission, from which he shrunk, so full was it of her helplessness and her pain, 'that I should take to her who saw my Alston last? Do you know, Mr. Duval,' she continued, turning to the actor, and producing the same effect upon him by that infinitely pathetic look, 'I have been thinking that the very last person to whom he ever spoke a friendly word must have been Miss Montressor or yourself--I wonder which it was?'