red her
conversation of the two!

The truth was that Dudley Veneer and Helen Darley met as two travellers
might meet in the desert, wearied, both of them, with their long journey,
one having food, but no water, the other water, but no food. Each saw
that the other had been in long conflict with some trial; for their
voices were low and tender, as patiently borne sorrow and humbly uttered
prayers make every human voice. Through these tones, more than by what
they said, they came into natural sympathetic relations with each other.
Nothing could be more unstudied. As for Dudley Venner, no beauty in all
the world could have so soothed and magnetized him as the very repose and
subdued gentleness which the Widow had thought would make the best
possible background for her own more salient and effective attractions.
No doubt, Helen, on her side, was almost too readily pleased with the
confidence this new acquaintance she was making seemed to show her from
the very first. She knew so few men of any condition! Mr. Silas
Peckham: he was her employer, and she ought to think of him as well as
she could; but every time she thought of him it was with a shiver of
disgust. Mr. Bernard Langdon: a noble young man, a true friend, like a
brother to her,--God bless him, and send him some young heart as fresh as
his own! But this gentleman produced a new impression upon her, quite
different from any to which she was accustomed. His rich, low tones had
the strangest significance to her; she felt sure he must have lived
through long experiences, sorrowful like her own. Elsie's father! She
looked into his dark eyes, as she listened to him, to see if they had any
glimmer of that peculiar light, diamond-bright, but cold and still, which
she knew so well in Elsie's. Anything but that! Never was there more
tenderness, it seemed to her, than in the whole look and expression of
Elsie's father. She must have been a great trial to him; yet his face
was that of one who had been saddened, not soured, by his discipline.
Knowing what Elsie must be to him, how hard she must make any parent's
life, Helen could not but be struck with the interest Mr. Dudley Venner
showed in her as his daughter's instructress. He was too kind to her;
again and again she meekly turned from him, so as to leave him free to
talk to the showy lady at his other side, who was looking all the while

"like the night
Of cloudless realms a