"You hear her, Margaret? Forgive her freely. Think if we had lost her. Think----" But the idea of his little girl wandering homeless and unprotected in our great London through the long night hours, was too much for the colonel. Ill and over-wrought, he turned white, staggered, and, throwing himself into the nearest chair, sobbed like a child. Mrs. Desmond's maid sympathized too deeply with her injured mistress to find it possible to wait on Helen that night. But Helen's cause having been adjudicated a rightful one by the kitchen tribunal, where rough justice is meted out with impartiality as a rule, the poor wornout child had no lack of practical sympathy and help. She was soon in bed and asleep, and although she woke up with a curious stiff feeling all over her, she was by no means seriously the worse for her rash adventure. She awoke in a very humble frame of mind, thoroughly ashamed of her flight, and half afraid to venture upon any more good resolutions. She knew with unerring instinct that her stepmother had not forgiven her, never would forgive her, and her heart sank as she thought of the sharp reproofs, the never-ending tasks that would most certainly be her portion for some time to come, until, perhaps, the memory of this fault was lost through the commission of another of still greater enormity. "But I can never do anything so dreadful again, never!" said Helen to herself as she rose and dressed; "and I must be patient. Perhaps if I am she will even get to like me a little"--Mrs. Desmond was always inelegantly _she_ in Helen's thoughts. "I don't know that I should care for that, though. But for father's sake, dear father! I had no idea he cared so much. I must never hurt him again." After this she went down-stairs to practise her scales as usual, only very quietly and carefully, with no unnecessary faults. Things soon fell into their old channel, and, as she had anticipated, Helen had a good many small persecutions to endure, although Mrs. Desmond carefully avoided any open conflict with her stepdaughter. And in one way things were never so bad with Helen again after that memorable evening, for she never again doubted her father's love, and, as Cousin Mary had said, love makes so many things easy. CHAPTER IV. STRANGERS YET. Spring did not fulfil its early promise that year. Those few warm days were followed by long weeks of bitter east wind, during which the tender green leaves grew dark and shrivelled, whilst even the daffodils and primroses that were hawked about the streets had a pinched, careworn look, as though their whole existence had been a struggle.