Why was it that, as he said so, the face of Helen Lingard rose before his mind’s eye as he had now seen it twice in the congregation at the Abbey--pale with an inward trouble as it seemed, large-eyed and worn--so changed, yet so ennobled? Even then he had felt the deadening effect of its listlessness, and had had to turn away lest it should compel him to feel that he was but talking to the winds, or into a desert where dwelt no voice of human response. Why should he think of her now? Was it that her troubled pallid face had touched him--had set something near his heart a trembling, whether with merely human sympathy or with the tenderness of man for suffering woman? Certainly he had never till then thought of her with the slightest interest, and why should she come up to him now? Could it be that--? Good heavens! There was her brother ill! And had not Faber said there seemed something unusual about the character of his illness?--What could it mean?--It was impossible of course--but yet--and yet-- “Do you think,” he said, “we are in any way bound to inquire further into the affair?” “If I had thought so, I should not have left it unmentioned till now,” answered Polwarth. “But without being busybodies, we might be prepared in case the thing should unfold itself, and put it in our power to be useful. Meantime I have the relief of the confessional.” CHAPTER XII. INVITATION. As Wingfold walked back to his lodgings, he found a new element mingling with the varied matter of his previous inquiry. Human suffering laid hold upon him--neither as his own nor as that of humanity, but as that of men and women--known or unknown, it mattered nothing: there were hearts in the world from whose agony broke terrible cries, hearts of which sad faces like that of Miss Lingard were the exponents. Such hearts might be groaning and writhing in any of the houses he passed, and, even if he knew the hearts, and what the vampire that sucked their blood, he could do nothing for their relief.