The colonel did not reply. Why his wife had yielded so readily rather puzzled him. But Mrs. Desmond had her own reasons. Helen had long been a thorn in her side, and the pricking of this poor little thorn was fast becoming unendurable to her. She had resolved, therefore, that her stepdaughter must be sent away, and, like a wise woman, she was husbanding all her forces towards the gaining of this important end, and she was well aware that a little complaisance in an unimportant matter of this kind would make her future task easier. Helen was even more surprised than her father to find that after her unlucky day at the Rectory no embargo was put upon her intercourse with Harold. How it came about neither they nor their elders exactly knew, but through the long June days the two children were constantly together, either working in a rough workshop which the colonel had extemporized for them in an outbuilding, or rambling about the country in search of flowers and butterflies. Notwithstanding Mrs. Desmond's determination about Helen's future, it is scarcely likely that she could have witnessed her stepdaughter leading a life so opposed to her own preconceived notions without remonstrance had she not been really suffering from the effects of her long anxiety in the spring, and disposed for the first time in her life to let things take their course. It was a very happy time for Helen, the happiest, perhaps, that she had ever known. In the old days, when all her desires were gratified, her waywardness and wilfulness had thrown a cloud over everything. Now she was honestly trying to do what was right and to keep her temper under due control, whilst healthy, sympathetic companionship kept her mind occupied and prevented her from dwelling upon morbid fancies. "If only mamma would like me a little," she used to think sometimes as she went off to bed chilled by Mrs. Desmond's frigid good-night, but full of happy plans for the morrow. But even of gaining "mamma's liking" Helen did not altogether despair. She meant to be so good, so obedient, she felt quite sure that she must win her stepmother at last. "What is it that you wish for most in all the world?" she asked Harold suddenly one evening. Mrs. Desmond had kept her room all day, and Helen and Harold, having drunk tea in the school-room, with the colonel as their guest, were sitting under an apple-tree in the orchard. The setting sun flooded the fair June landscape, and threw a glory round their young heads, showing to their half-bewildered childish eyes strange visions and "lights that never were on sea or land." "What do I wish for most!" repeated Harold. "To do something great, I think. What is the good of living if one is only to be just like everyone else. I should like people to point me out as I went by, and to say, 'That is Harold Bayden. He did--' I wonder what I should like them to say, there are so many things it would be nice to be famous for."