"I know nothing whatever of Miss Cartwright as yet, Helen; she appears very shy, but we must try to give her courage, my dear girls. I hope we shall be on terms of as great intimacy with our new Clergyman as with our former one: it was a sort of association that your dear father particularly approved, and that alone is a sufficient reason for our wishing to cultivate it." This allusion was too solemn to admit any light conversation to follow it. Mrs. Mowbray strolled with Fanny into the conservatory, and Rosalind persuaded Helen that they should find the shrubberies infinitely cooler and more agreeable than the house. But even under the thickest cover that the grounds could offer, Helen could not be tempted fully to open her heart upon the subject of Mr. Cartwright, an indulgence which Rosalind certainly expected to obtain when she proposed the walk; but the name of her father had acted like a spell on Helen, and all that she could be brought positively to advance on the subject of the Cartwright family was, that she did not think Miss Cartwright was shy. Within the next fortnight nearly every one who claimed a visiting acquaintance with the Mowbray family, both in the village and the neighbourhood round it, had called at the Park. "All the calling is over now," said Helen, "and I am very glad of it." "Every body has been very kind and attentive," replied her mother, "and next week we must begin to return their calls. I hope nobody will be offended, for some of them must be left for many days; the weather is very hot, and the horses must not be overworked." "I wonder why that charming little person that I fell in love with--the widow, I mean, that lives in the Cottage at Wrexhill," said Rosalind,--"I wonder she has not been to see you! She appeared to like you all very much." "I have thought of that two or three times," replied Helen. "I think, if they had any of them been ill, we should have heard it; and yet otherwise I cannot account for such inattention." "It is merely accidental, I am sure," said Mrs. Mowbray. "But there is one omission, Helen, that cuts me to the heart!" Tears burst from her eyes as she spoke. Poor Helen knew not how to answer: she was well aware that the omission her mother alluded to was that of Sir Gilbert and Lady Harrington; and she knew too the cause of it. Lady Harrington, who, with one of the best hearts in the world, was sometimes rather blunt in her manner of showing it, had sent over a groom with a letter to Helen, her god-daughter and especial favourite, very fully explaining the cause of their not calling, but in a manner that could in no degree enable her to remove her mother's uneasiness respecting it. This letter, which by her ladyship's especial orders was delivered privately into the hands of Helen, ran thus: "My darling Child!