d protecting
tenderness Helen guided and guarded her steps. Louis, who was at home
also passing his summer holidays, beheld for the first time the lovely
blind girl of whom Helen had so often spoken and written.

He was now a man in appearance, of noble stature, and most prepossessing
countenance. Helen was enthusiastically fond of her brother, and had
said to Alice, with unconscious repetition--

"Oh! how I wish you could see Louis. He is so handsome and is so good.
He has such a brave rejoicing look. Somehow or other, I always feel safe
in his presence."

"Is he handsomer than Arthur?" Alice would ask.

"No, not handsomer--but then he's so different, one cannot compare them.
Arthur is so much older, you know."

"Arthur doesn't look old, does he?"

"No, not old--but he has such an air of authority sometimes, which gives
you such an impression of power, that I would fear him, did he not all
at once appear so gentle and so kind. Louis makes you love him all the
time, and you never think of his being displeased."

Still, while Helen dwelt on her brother's praise with fond and fluent
tongue, she felt without being able to describe her feelings, that he
had lost something of his original beauty. The breath of the world had
passed over the mind and dimmed its purity. His was the joyous, reckless
spirit that gave life to the convivial board; and temptations, which a
colder temperament might have resisted, often held him in ignoble
vassalage. Now inhaling the hallowed atmosphere of home, all the pure
influences of his boyhood resumed their empire over his heart--and he
wondered that he could ever have mingled with the grosser elements of
society.

"Blind!" repeated he to himself, while gazing on the calm, angelic
countenance of Alice, so beautiful in its repose. "Is it possible that a
creature so fair and bright, dwells in the darkness of perpetual
midnight? Can no electric ray pierce the cloud that is folded over her
vision? Is there no power in science to remove the dark fillet that
binds those celestial eyes, and pour in upon them the light of a
new-born day?"

While he thus gazed on the unseeing face, so near him that perhaps she
might have had a vague consciousness of the intensity, the warmth of the
gaze, Helen approached, and taking the hand of Alice, passed it softly
over the features of her brother, as well as his profuse and clustering
hair.

"Alice has eyes in her fingers, Louis--I want her to _see_ you