e walls of the inn parlour were covered deep in
sketches of the surrounding scenery--both oil and water-colour, bad and
good, framed and unframed, left there by the artists who haunted the inn.
The room was also adorned by a glass case full of stuffed birds, badly
moth-eaten, a book-case containing some battered books mostly about
fishing, and a large Visitors' Book lying on a centre-table, between a
Bradshaw and an old guide-book. Shut up, in winter, the little room would
smell intolerably close and musty. But with the windows open, and a rainy
sun streaming in, it spoke pleasantly of holidays for plain hard-working
folk, and of that "passion for the beauty flown," which distils, from the
summer hours of rest, strength for the winter to come.

Lucy had let Helena go out alone, of set purpose. For she knew, or
guessed, what Nature and Earth had done for Helena during the month they
had passed together in this mountain-land, since that night at Beechmark.
Helena had made no moan--revealed nothing. Only a certain paleness in her
bright cheek, a certain dreamy habit that Lucy had not before noticed in
her; a restlessness at night which the thin partitions of the old inn
sometimes made audible, betrayed that the youth in her was fighting its
first suffering, and fighting to win. Lucy had never dared to
speak--still less to pity. But her love was always at hand, and Helena
had repaid it, and the silence it dictated, with an answering love. Lucy
believed--though with trembling--that the worst was now over, and that
new horizons were opening on the stout soul that had earned them. But
now, as before, she held her peace.

Her diary lay on her lap, and she was thoughtfully turning it over. It
contained nothing but the barest entries of facts. But they meant a good
deal to her, as she looked through them. Every letter, for instance, from
Beechmark had been noted. Lord Buntingford had written three times to
Helena, and twice to herself. She had seen Helena's letters; and Helena
had read hers. It seemed to her that Helena had deliberately shown her
own; that the act was part of the conflict which Lucy guessed at, but
must not comment on, by word or look. All the letters were the true
expression of the man. The first, in which he described in words, few;
but singularly poignant, the death of his wife, his recognition of his
son, and the faint beginnings of hope for the boy's maimed life, had
forced tears from Lucy. Helena had read i