through the grounds into the street, and
along the road home to The Headlands. It was a long walk for me, yet I
overcame the distance quickly, and long before eleven o'clock gained the
house, entered quietly and sat down beside my mother on her sofa, unseen
by Mr. Floyd and Helen, who were in the next room.

I was half mad with baffled desire, blind anger and fatigue that night,
and the sound of Helen's voice as she sang some song like a lullaby was
like a blessing. My mother did not speak to me; only smiled gently in my
face and kissed me on my forehead. Her tenderness touched my heart, and
my head drooped to her shoulder, then to her lap, and I lay there like a
boy comforted by his mother's touch, just as I was. A kind of peaceful
stupor came over me. Helen went on singing some quiet German piece of
which her father was fond, with many verses and a sweet, moving story.
Her voice was delicious in its way, with a noble and simple style, and a
pathetic charm in some of its cadences I never heard surpassed. Mr.
Floyd never tired of hearing her. After a time the ballad came to an
end.

"Floyd has come, papa," I heard her say.

"Why, no! Has he? so early?"

"Go on singing, Helen," whispered my mother. "Floyd has gone to sleep."

She sang something soft, cooing, monotonous, a strain a mother might
sing as she hushed her baby at her breast: then she came out, followed
by her father, and both sat down beside us. I, half shyly, half through
dread of talking, went on counterfeiting sleep.

"Poor boy!" exclaimed Mr. Floyd. "He has evidently walked back from the
Point. He was tired out with his dissipations, or Miss Georgina was
coquetting with other men or ate too much to suit him. If I were in love
to extremity of passion with Miss Lenox, or rather with her brilliant
flesh-tints and her hands and feet, I should recover the moment I saw
her at table. She is the frankest gourmande I ever saw, and will be
stout in five years."

"Now, papa, Georgy's hands and feet are nothing so particular."

"Helen's are smaller and much better shaped," said my mother jealously.

"Now, Mary, how little you understand the points of a woman! Helen has
hands that I kiss"--and he kissed them--"the most beautiful hands in the
world; and she has feet whose very shoe-tie I adore; but, nevertheless,
there is nothing aggressive about her insteps and ankles. She considers
her feet made to walk with, not to captivate men with."

"I should hope not,