She had no fear of Jasper. Rosa, Helena, Neville, Jasper, and Edwin meet in Crisparkle’s drawing-room. Rosa is singing under the control of Jasper. She bursts into tears and shrieks out: ‘I can’t bear this! I am frightened! Take me away!’ Helena immediately comes to the rescue, and with one swift turn of her lithe figure lays the little beauty on a sofa. Edwin says to Jasper: ‘You are such a conscientious master, and require so much, that I believe you make her afraid of you. No wonder.’ ‘No wonder,’ repeated Helena. ‘There, Jack, you hear! You would be afraid of him, under similar circumstances, wouldn’t you, Miss Landless?’ ‘Not under any circumstances,’ returned Helena. This to my mind is the first unmistakable suggestion of what was to be developed. Here we have Jasper and Helena falling into enmity almost at the first moment of their meeting, challenging one another to battle. Helena accepts the challenge. Not under any circumstances would she be afraid of Jasper. She lives to redeem that word. 3. Dickens expressly tells us that Helena from her childhood was accustomed to disguise herself as a boy. ‘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.’ This is the strongest reason for the identification of Helena with Datchery. I find it difficult to suppose that any careful student of Dickens will believe that these facts about Helena’s disguise were put in without intent. It was one of those facts which Dickens intended his readers to interpret by the backward look. Those who were amazed when Datchery appeared as Helena would be referred back to the significant words which they had missed. Helena protects her unhappy brother in London, and plans against his enemies. She surmises that ‘Neville’s movements are watched, and that the purpose of his foes is to isolate him from all friends and acquaintances, and wear out his daily life grain by grain.’ She secures the help of Mr. Tartar. In her conference with Grewgious, Helena plans for checkmating Jasper, and inquires whether ‘it would be best to wait until any more maligning and pursuing of Neville on the part of this wretch shall disclose itself, or to try to anticipate it.’ 4. Helena’s whole heart went with the effort at detection. We have seen her hatred of Jasper. In the conversation between Helena and Rosa about Drood and Jasper, Rosa betrays her horror of Jasper and his mesmeric power over her, which makes her ashamed and passionately hurt. They resume on the same strain. Says Rosa: ‘But you said to-night that you would not be afraid of him, under any circumstances, and that gives me—who am so much afraid of him—courage to tell only you. Hold me! Stay with me! I am too frightened to be left by myself.’