Helen rode back to the Institute and inquired for Mr. Peckham.  She had not seen him during the brief interval between her departure from the mansion-house and her return to Old Sophy’s funeral.  There were various questions about the school she wished to ask.

“Oh, how’s your haaelth, Miss Darley?” Silas began.  “We’ve missed you consid’able.  Glad to see you back at the post of dooty.  Hope the Squire treated you hahnsomely,—­liberal pecooniary compensation,—­hey?  A’n’t much of a loser, I guess, by acceptin’ his propositions?”

Helen blushed at this last question, as if Silas had meant something by it beyond asking what money she had received; but his own double-meaning expression and her blush were too nice points for him to have taken cognizance of.  He was engaged in a mental calculation as to the amount of the deduction he should make under the head of “damage to the institootion,”—­this depending somewhat on that of the “pecooniary compensation” she might have received for her services as the friend of Elsie Venner.

So Helen slid back at once into her routine, the same faithful, patient creature she had always been.  But what was this new light which seemed to have kindled in her eyes?  What was this look of peace, which nothing could disturb, which smiled serenely through all the little meannesses with which the daily life of the educational factory surrounded her,—­which not only made her seem resigned, but overflowed all her features with a thoughtful, subdued happiness?  Mr. Bernard did not know,—­perhaps he did not guess.  The inmates of the Dudley mansion were not scandalized by any mysterious visits of a veiled or unveiled lady.  The vibrating tongues of the “female youth” of the Institute were not set in motion by the standing of an equipage at the gate, waiting for their lady teacher.  The servants at the mansion did not convey numerous letters with superscriptions in a bold, manly hand, sealed with the arms of a well-known house, and directed to Miss Helen Darley; nor, on the other hand, did Hiram, the man from the lean streak in New Hampshire, carry sweet-smelling, rose-hued, many-layered, criss-crossed, fine-stitch-lettered packages of note-paper directed to Dudley Venner, Esq., and all too scanty to hold that incredible expansion of the famous three words which a woman was born to say,—­that perpetual miracle which astonishes all the go-betweens who wear their shoes out in carrying a woman’s infinite variations on the theme, “I love you.”

But the reader must remember that there are walks in country-towns where people are liable to meet by accident, and that the hollow of an old tree has served the purpose of a post-office sometimes; so that he has her choice (to divide the pronouns impartially) of various hypotheses to account for the new glory of happiness which seemed to have irradiated our poor Helen’s features, as if her dreary life were awakening in the dawn of a blessed future.