Leonard stole softly towards the grimy window; and looking up towards the stars that shone pale over the roof-tops, he murmured, "O thou, the All-seeing and All-merciful!--how it comforts me now to think that though my dreams of knowledge may have sometimes obscured the Heaven, I never doubted that Thou wert there!--as luminous and everlasting, though behind the cloud!" So, for a few minutes, he prayed silently--then passed into Helen's room, and sat beside her motionless, for she slept. She woke just as Harley returned with a physician, and then Leonard, returning to his own room, saw amongst his papers the letter he had written to Mr. Dale; and muttering, "I need not disgrace my calling--I need not be the mendicant now"--held the letter to the flame of the candle. And while he said this, and as the burning tinder dropped on the floor, the sharp hunger, unfelt during his late anxious emotion, gnawed at his entrails. Still even hunger could not reach that noble pride which had yielded to a sentiment nobler than itself--and he smiled as he repeated, "No mendicant!--the life that I was sworn to guard is saved. I can raise against Fate the front of the Man once more." CHAPTER XIX. A few days afterwards, and Helen, removed to a pure air, and under the advice of the first physicians, was out of all danger. It was a pretty detached cottage, with its windows looking over the wild heaths of Norwood, to which Harley rode daily to watch the convalescence of his young charge--an object in life was already found. As she grew better and stronger, he coaxed her easily into talking, and listened to her with pleased surprise. The heart so infantine, and the sense so womanly, struck him much by its rare contrast and combination. Leonard, whom he had insisted on placing also in the cottage, had stayed there willingly till Helen's recovery was beyond question. Then he came to Lord L'Estrange, as the latter was about one day to leave the cottage, and said quietly, "Now, my Lord, that Helen is safe, and now that she will need me no more, I can no longer be a pensioner on your bounty. I return to London." "You are my visitor--not my pensioner, foolish boy," said Harley, who had already noticed the pride which spoke in that farewell; "come into the garden, and let us talk." Harley seated himself on a bench on the little lawn; Nero crouched at his feet; Leonard stood beside him. "So," said Lord L'Estrange, "you would return to London!--What to do?" "Fulfil my fate." "And that?" "I cannot guess. Fate is the Isis whose veil no mortal can ever raise." "You should be born for great things," said Harley, abruptly. "I am sure that you write well. I have seen that you study with passion. Better than writing and better than study, you have a noble heart, and the proud desire of independence. Let me see your MSS., or any copies of what you have already printed. Do not hesitate--I ask but to be a reader. I don't pretend to be a patron; it is a word I hate."