“I am now alone in the world,” Dudley Venner said.

Helen must have known that before he spoke.  But the tone in which he said it had so much meaning, that she could not find a word to answer him with.  They sat in silence, which the old tall clock counted out in long seconds; but it was a silence which meant more than any words they had ever spoken.

“Alone in the world!  Helen, the freshness of my life is gone, and there is little left of the few graces which in my younger days might have fitted me to win the love of women.  Listen to me,—­kindly, if you can; forgive me, at least.  Half my life has been passed in constant fear and anguish, without any near friend to share my trials.  My task is done now; my fears have ceased to prey upon me; the sharpness of early sorrows has yielded something of its edge to time.  You have bound me to you by gratitude in the tender care you have taken of my poor child.  More than this.  I must tell you all now, out of the depth of this trouble through which I am passing.  I have loved you from the moment we first met; and if my life has anything left worth accepting, it is yours.  Will you take the offered gift?”

Helen looked in his face, surprised, bewildered.

“This is not for me,—­not for me,” she said.  “I am but a poor faded flower, not worth the gathering of such a one as you.  No, no,—­I have been bred to humble toil all my days, and I could not be to you what you ought to ask.  I am accustomed to a kind of loneliness and self-dependence.  I have seen nothing, almost, of the world, such as you were born to move in.  Leave me to my obscure place and duties; I shall at least have peace;—­and you—­you will surely find in due time some one better fitted by Nature and training to make you happy.”

“No, Miss Darley!” Dudley Venner said, almost sternly.  “You must not speak to a man who has lived through my experiences of looking about for a new choice after his heart has once chosen.  Say that you can never love me; say that I have lived too long to share your young life; say that sorrow has left nothing in me for Love to find his pleasure in; but do not mock me with the hope of a new affection for some unknown object.  The first look of yours brought me to your side.  The first tone of your voice sunk into my heart.  From this moment my life must wither out or bloom anew.  My home is desolate.  Come under my roof and make it bright once more,—­share my life with me,—­or I shall give the halls of the old mansion to the bats and the owls, and wander forth alone without a hope or a friend!”

To find herself with a man’s future at the disposal of a single word of hers!—­a man like this, too, with a fascination for her against which she had tried to shut her heart, feeling that he lived in another sphere than hers, working as she was for her bread, a poor operative in the factory of a hard master and jealous overseer, the salaried drudge of Mr. Silas Peckham!  Why, she had thought he was