Poor Helen! Forgotten by everybody--her governess had left her earlier than usual in the day--she had been sitting alone in her little down-stairs school-room, thinking over all that she had learnt from Cousin Mary. She had been forming the most heroic resolves about her future conduct. Never, never would she purposely annoy her stepmother again. She would be patient, she would bear reproof meekly. And she would remember that great Father whose presence was such a reality to Cousin Mary, and who was training her not in anger but in love. As for her dear earthly father, Helen smiled as she thought of him, and recalled the days when he was always patient with her wayward fits. Then the gathering twilight made her feel lonely, and she remembered that he was ill upstairs. She would go to him, she thought, and, if by any happy chance she found him alone, she would tell him of her sorrow for the past and of her good resolves for the future. And if Mrs. Desmond was there? Well, there could be no harm in creeping in very gently and asking him how he felt, giving him a kiss, perhaps, and going away again. "I must be very quiet, and oh! I hope I shan't knock up against anything," she said to herself as she went upstairs, speaking half-audibly for company, as it were, and to keep up her spirits, for the house seemed so still and quiet. The drawing-room door stood partly open, but a screen concealed the upper part of the room, where the colonel's sofa stood, from view. No one heard Helen enter, and although she caught a murmur of voices she was half-way across the room when her father's last remark arrested her attention. I suppose it is a fact that it is in our most exalted moods we are most liable to fall. Her father's words stung Helen to the quick, and changed the whole current of her thoughts. In a twinkling all her good resolutions vanished. While she had been determining to submit, to be good, they, her father and stepmother, were discussing her, wishing to be rid of her, owning her a burden. And yet, just for the sake of tormenting her, of keeping her in bondage, they had refused her to Cousin Mary. Oh, it was cruel, cruel! "How could you do it? how could you?" she cried, her voice breaking into a passionate sob. "Don't you know that I hate being here; yes, _hate_ it quite as much as you hate having me. And Cousin Mary is good. I am not bad when I am with her. I--" "Helen," broke in Mrs. Desmond, while the colonel moaned and put his hand to his head, "don't you see your father is ill? Go away instantly. If you have learnt from Miss Macleod to listen at doors I must write and beg her never to enter my house again. I did not know that you were deceitful in addition to your other faults. Go at once. Don't speak again." "Father," began Helen; but he shook his head impatiently and motioned her away. For a moment she looked at them both defiantly, then, like one possessed, she scattered some books that lay upon a table near her in all directions.