The only point on which he blamed her, or in which, according to Rosalind's account, she had shown more yielding, and, as he called it, weakness than her helpless and most unhappy position rendered unavoidable, was in the never having attempted to see Lady Harrington. This he declared was in itself wrong, and rendered doubly so by her situation, which would have rendered the society and counsel of such a friend invaluable. But he did not know--even Rosalind did not know--that this forbearance for which he blamed her was the result of those qualities for which they most loved her. But Helen knew, though they did not, that if she had gone to Oakley, she should have thought more of hearing news of Colonel Harrington than of any advice her godmother could have given her, and have been infinitely more anxious to learn if he ever mentioned her in his letters, than to know whether Lady Harrington thought it best that she should be civil, or that she should be rude, in her demeanour towards the Vicar of Wrexhill. It was this conscious weakness which lent strength to the unreasonable violence of her mother on this point. Had Helen been quite fancy-free and altogether heart-whole, she would have had courage to discover that a passionate prohibition, originating, as she could not doubt it did, with a man for whom she entertained no species of esteem, ought not to make her abandon one of the kindest friends she had ever known. But there is a feeling stronger than reason in a young girl's breast; and again and again this feeling had whispered to Helen, "'It is not maidenly--' to go to the house of a man that I fear I love, and that I hope loves me, for the chance of hearing his name mentioned--and that too when my mother forbids me to enter his father's doors." But there was an authority in Charles's voice when he said, "You have been wrong, Helen," which seemed to have power even over this, and she promised that if after he paid the visit to Oakley, which he was fully determined to do on the morrow, he should report that her friends there were not too angry to receive her, she would consent to volunteer a visit to them, assigning as her reason for doing so, to her mother, that it was Charles's wish.