e so mean, my fond mother?"

Again the Countess wept, and her tears were not dried when she left the
room.

CHAPTER VIII.

Oh! Helen, fair Helen--type of the quiet, serene, unnoticed, deep-felt
excellence of woman! Woman, less as the ideal that a poet conjures from
the air, than as the companion of a poet on the earth! Woman who, with her
clear sunny vision of things actual, and the exquisite fibre of her
delicate sense, supplies the deficiencies of him whose foot stumbles on
the soil, because his eye is too intent upon the stars! Woman, the
provident, the comforting angel--whose pinions are folded round the heart,
guarding there a divine spring unmarred by the winter of the world! Helen,
soft Helen, is it indeed in thee that the wild and brilliant "lord of
wantonness and ease" is to find the regeneration of his life--the rebaptism
of his soul? Of what avail thy meek prudent household virtues to one whom
Fortune screens from rough trial?--whose sorrows lie remote from thy
ken?--whose spirit, erratic and perturbed, now rising, now falling, needs a
vision more subtle than thine to pursue, and a strength that can sustain
the reason, when it droops, on the wings of enthusiasm and passion?

And thou thyself, O nature, shrinking and humble, that needest to be
courted forth from the shelter, and developed under the calm and genial
atmosphere of holy, happy love--can such affection as Harley L'Estrange may
proffer suffice to thee? Will not the blossoms, yet folded in the petal,
wither away beneath the shade that may protect them from the storm, and
yet shut them from the sun? Thou who, where thou givest love, seekest,
though meekly, for love in return; --to be the soul's sweet necessity, the
life's household partner to him who receives all thy faith and
devotion--canst thou influence the sources of joy and of sorrow in the
heart that does not heave at thy name? Hast thou the charm and the force
of the moon, that the tides of that wayward sea shall ebb and flow at thy
will? Yet who shall say--who conjecture how near two hearts may become,
when no guilt lies between them, and time brings the ties all its own?
Rarest of all things on earth is the union in which both, by their
contrasts, make harmonious their blending; each supplying the defects of
the helpmate, and completing, by fusion, one strong human soul! Happiness
enough, where even Peace does but seldom preside, when each can bring to
the altar, if not, the flame