1. Helena has the mental alertness and ability which qualified her for the task. It is interesting to see from the original manuscript and the proofs how Dickens kept raising and lowering the lights which fell upon the Landlesses. We have seen from the original manuscript in chapter vi. how Dickens heightened his description of the pair. He changed ‘A handsome young fellow, and a handsome girl; both dark and rich in colour,’ into ‘An unusually handsome, lithe young fellow, and an unusually handsome, lithe girl; much alike; both very dark, and very rich in colour.’ He emphasises Helena’s personal characteristics: ‘Slender, supple, quick of eye and limb; half shy, half defiant; fierce of look; an indefinable kind of pause coming and going on their whole expression, both of face and form, which might be equally likened to the pause before a crouch or a bound.’ She fought her way through her tragical childhood, was beaten by a cruel stepfather, and would have allowed him to ‘tear her to pieces before she would have let him believe that he could make her shed a tear.’ ‘She had a masterful look.’ Rosa said to her: ‘You seem to have resolution and power enough to crush me. I shrink into nothing by the side of your presence.’ But it is soon manifest that Helena has a tender heart. She and her brother came to the Crisparkles ‘to quarrel with you, and affront you, and break away again.’ But they are touched by Mr. Crisparkle’s kindness, and Helena is more than touched. Neville tells Crisparkle that in describing his own imperfections he is not describing his sister’s. ‘She has come out of the disadvantages of our miserable life, as much better than I am as that cathedral tower is higher than these chimneys.’ Describing the misery of their childhood to Crisparkle, Neville says: ‘You ought to know, to her honour, that nothing in our misery ever subdued her, though it often cowed me. When we ran away from it (we ran away four times in six years, to be soon brought back and cruelly punished), the flight was always of her planning and leading. Each time she dressed as a boy, and showed the daring of a man. I take it we were seven years old when we first decamped.’ He says again to Crisparkle: ‘You don’t know, sir, what a complete understanding can exist between my sister and me, though no spoken word—perhaps hardly as much as a look—may have passed between us.’ 2. She has been from the beginning a born planner and leader. She has shown the daring of a man. When her brother lost the pocket-knife with which she was to have cut her hair short, she tried desperately to tear it out or to bite it off. Yet this strong and fiercely passionate girl had herself under the strictest control.