ed.

"Well," said he, soon recovering his good humour, "since you are
certainly better to-day without the draught, discontinue it also
to-morrow. I will make an alteration for the day after." So that
night Madame Dalibard visited in vain her niece's chamber: Helen had a
reprieve.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE SHADES ON THE DIAL

The following morning was indeed eventful to the family at Laughton; and
as if conscious of what it brought forth, it rose dreary and sunless.
One heavy mist covered all the landscape, and a raw, drizzling rain fell
pattering through the yellow leaves.

Madame Dalibard, pleading her infirmities, rarely left her room before
noon, and Varney professed himself very irregular in his hours of
rising; the breakfast, therefore, afforded no social assembly to the
family, but each took that meal in the solitude of his or her own
chamber. Percival, in whom all habits partook of the healthfulness and
simplicity of his character, rose habitually early, and that day, in
spite of the weather, walked forth betimes to meet the person charged
with the letters from the post. He had done so for the last three or
four days, impatient to hear from his mother, and calculating that it
was full time to receive the expected answer to his confession and his
prayer. He met the messenger at the bottom of the park, not far from
Guy's Oak. This day he was not disappointed. The letter-bag contained
three letters for himself,--two with the foreign postmark, the third in
Ardworth's hand. It contained also a letter for Madame Dalibard, and two
for Varney.

Leaving the messenger to take these last to the Hall, Percival, with his
own prizes, plunged into the hollow of the glen before him, and, seating
himself at the foot of Guy's Oak, through the vast branches of which the
rain scarcely came, and only in single, mournful drops, he opened first
the letter in his mother's hand, and read as follows:--

MY DEAR, DEAR SON,--How can I express to you the alarm your letter has
given to me! So these, then, are the new relations you have discovered!
I fondly imagined that you were alluding to some of my own family, and
conjecturing who, amongst my many cousins, could have so captivated
your attention. These the new relations,--Lucretia Dalibard, Helen
Mainwaring! Percival, do you not know ---- No, you cannot know that
Helen Mainwaring is the daughter of a disgraced man, of one who (more
than suspected of fraud in the bank in which he w