ns. Every thought tended to add to her
conviction that she was correct, and told her that he never would
succeed in his scheme. He would now, for certain, endeavour to see her
alone, and lay before her the danger into which she had plunged herself,
and the bargain by which she would be relieved from it. But she would
defeat him; she would renounce her walks in the woods, desert, for a
time, her bowers, and bid adieu to her silver Kirtle. She would keep her
apartment under a pretence of slight indisposition--far from an
untruth--and, in the meantime, try to devise some mode of relief from
her painful situation.

But the solicitude of her parents interfered, in some degree, with these
plans. They discovered that she was not so ill as to be unable to seek
what might do her service--her former walks and amusements around
Kirconnel Lee; and thus was she obliged to yield to kindness; yet she
contrived to have her parents near her, so as to deprive Blacket House
of an opportunity of communicating to her his imputed plan of enforcing
his suit. As yet, his silence had been continued: her parents were still
in ignorance; and it was only (so she argued) because he had not
hitherto found her alone, that his dreaded communication had not as yet
been made. On the occasion of her first walk, however, she, by some
untoward chance, was left in one of the arbours alone, and the
opportunity (the first that had occurred) was seized by him--Blacket
House was again before her, and all her fears were in a moment roused.
Their eyes met with an intelligence they had never before possessed.
Every passing thought seemed to be mutually read, while a few words of
ordinary import seemed to be only as a preparation to his expected
statement. Helen did not dare to leave him; she feared to rouse his
anger, and yet she wanted courage to reply with ordinary pertinence to
his remarks. His eye was constantly fixed on her, and the few words he
uttered came with difficulty and pain; yet was there not the slightest
allusion to the secret he undoubtedly held locked up in his breast. Was
he not to bring forward his threat of exposing her, as a wrenching
instrument, to force from her a consent that he was satisfied would
never be given voluntarily? There was no indication of any such issue.
What could be the true meaning of this dark-minded man's conduct? Again
he had disappointed her fearful anticipations. He had not told her
parents; he was not to tell herself