“I am going to find Mr. Wingfold,” she said in a hoarse voice, as she took her hat. “Don’t be long then, Helen,” returned Leopold. “I can’t bear you out of my sight. And don’t let aunt come into the room. SHE might come again, you know, and then all would be out.--Bring him with you, Helen.” “I will,” answered Helen, and went. The curate might have returned: she would seek him first at his lodging. She cared nothing about appearances now. It was a dull afternoon. Clouds had gathered, and the wind was chilly. It seemed to blow out of the church, which stood up cold and gray against the sky, filling the end of the street. What a wretched, horrible world it was! She approached the church, and entered the churchyard from which it rose like a rock from the Dead Sea--a type of the true church, around whose walls lie the dead bodies of the old selves left behind by those who enter. Helen would have envied the dead, who lay so still under its waves; but, alas! if Leopold was right, they but roamed elsewhere in their trouble, and were no better for dying. She hurried across, and reached the house; but Mr. Wingfold had not yet returned, and she hurried back across it again, to tell Leopold that she must go farther to find him. The poor youth was already more composed. What will not the vaguest hope sometimes do for a man! Helen told him she had seen the curate in the park, when she was out in the morning, and he might be there still, or she might meet him coming back. Leopold only begged her to make haste. She took the road to the lodge. She did not meet him, and it was with intense repugnance that she approached the gate. “Is Mr. Wingfold here?” she asked of Rachel, as if she had never spoken to her before; and Rachel, turning paler at the sight of her, answered that he was in the garden with her uncle, and went to call him. The moment he appeared she said, in a tone rendered by conflicting emotions inexplicable, and sounding almost rude, “Will you come to my brother? He is very ill, and wants to see you.” “Certainly,” returned Wingfold; “I will go with you at once.” But in his heart he trembled at the thought of being looked to for consolation and counsel, and that apparently in a case of no ordinary kind. Most likely he would not know what to say, or how to behave himself! How different it would be if with all his heart he believed the grand lovely things recorded in the book of his profession! Then indeed he might enter the chambers of pain and fear and guilt with the innocent confidence of a winged angel of comfort and healing! But now the eyes of his understanding were blinded with the IFS and BUTS that flew swarming like black muscae wherever they turned. Still he would--nay, he must go and do his best. They walked across the park to reach the house by the garden, and for some distance they walked in silence. At length Helen said: