Mrs. Marilla Rowens did not know what to make of it.  She had made her tea-party expressly for Mr. Dudley Venner.  She had placed him just as she wanted, between herself and a meek, delicate woman who dressed in gray, wore a plain breastpin with hair in it, who taught a pack of girls up there at the school, and looked as if she were born for a teacher,—­the very best foil that she could have chosen; and here was this man, polite enough to herself, to be sure, but turning round to that very undistinguished young person, as if he rather preferred her conversation of the two!

The truth was that Dudley Venner and Helen Darley met as two travellers might meet in the desert, wearied, both of them, with their long journey, one having food, but no water, the other water, but no food.  Each saw that the other had been in long conflict with some trial; for their voices were low and tender, as patiently borne sorrow and humbly uttered prayers make every human voice.  Through these tones, more than by what they said, they came into natural sympathetic relations with each other.  Nothing could be more unstudied.  As for Dudley Venner, no beauty in all the world could have so soothed and magnetized him as the very repose and subdued gentleness which the Widow had thought would make the best possible background for her own more salient and effective attractions.  No doubt, Helen, on her side, was almost too readily pleased with the confidence this new acquaintance she was making seemed to show her from the very first.  She knew so few men of any condition!  Mr. Silas Peckham:  he was her employer, and she ought to think of him as well as she could; but every time she thought of him it was with a shiver of disgust.  Mr. Bernard Langdon:  a noble young man, a true friend, like a brother to her,—­God bless him, and send him some young heart as fresh as his own!  But this gentleman produced a new impression upon her, quite different from any to which she was accustomed.  His rich, low tones had the strangest significance to her; she felt sure he must have lived through long experiences, sorrowful like her own.  Elsie’s father!  She looked into his dark eyes, as she listened to him, to see if they had any glimmer of that peculiar light, diamond-bright, but cold and still, which she knew so well in Elsie’s.  Anything but that!  Never was there more tenderness, it seemed to her, than in the whole look and expression of Elsie’s father.  She must have been a great trial to him; yet his face was that of one who had been saddened, not soured, by his discipline.  Knowing what Elsie must be to him, how hard she must make any parent’s life, Helen could not but be struck with the interest Mr. Dudley Venner showed in her as his daughter’s instructress.  He was too kind to her; again and again she meekly turned from him, so as to leave him free to talk to the showy lady at his other side, who was looking all the while

“like the night Of cloudless realms and starry skies”;