“Perhaps I ought not to have told you about it until after you had had your lunch; you are not eating anything, Miss Helen.”
“I don't want anything,” said Helen, mournfully; “take it now, please, Elizabeth, and please do not trouble me any more. I have a great deal to worry me.”
When the woman had left the room, Helen shut the door and then sat down on a chair, staring blankly before her; there was a mirror just across the room, and her own image caught her eye, startling her by its pale and haggard look.
“Dear me, it's dreadful!” she cried aloud, springing up. “Why did I let people trouble me in this way? I can't help Arthur, and I couldn't have helped him in the beginning. It's every bit of it his own fault, and I don't see why I should let it make me ill. And it's the same with the other thing; I could have been happy without all that wealth if I'd never seen it, and now I know I'll never be happy again,—oh, I know it!”
And Helen began once more pacing up and down.
“I never was this way before in my life,” she cried with increasing vexation, “and I won't have it!”
She clenched her hands angrily, struggling within herself to shake off what was tormenting her. But she might as well have tried to shake off a mountain from her shoulders; hers had been none of the stern experience that gives power and command to the character, and of the kind of energy that she needed she had none, and not even a thought of it. She tried only to forget her troubles in some of her old pleasures, and when she found that she could not read, and that the music she tried to play sounded hollow and meaningless, she could only fling herself down upon the sofa with a moan. There, realizing her own impotence, she sank into dull despair, unable any longer to realize the difficulties which troubled her, and with only one certainty in her mind—that she was more lost and helpless than she had ever thought it possible for her to be.
Time is not a thing of much consequence under such circumstances, and it was a couple of hours before Helen was aroused. She heard a carriage stop at the door, and sprang up in alarm, with the thought that it might be Mr. Harrison. But as she stood trembling in the middle of the room she heard a voice inquiring for her, and recognized it as that of her aunt; a moment later Mrs. Roberts rushed into the room, and catching sight of Helen, flung her arms eagerly about her.
“My dear girl,” she cried, “Mr. Harrison has just told me about what has happened!” And then as she read her niece's state of mind in her countenance, she added, “I expected to find you rejoicing, Helen; what is the matter?”
In point of fact the woman had known pretty well just how she would find Helen, and having no idea of leaving her to her own tormenting fancies, she had driven over the moment she had finished her lunch. “I received your father's letter,” she said, without waiting for Helen to answer her, “so I came right over to take you back.”