“He was with Mrs. Cameron,” the servant said, and taking out a card Mark wrote down a few words, and handing it to the servant who had been looking curiously at Helen, he continued standing until a step was heard on the stairs and Wilford came quietly in.

It was not a very loving meeting, but Helen was civil and Wilford was polite, offering her his hand and asking some questions about her journey.

“I was intending to meet you myself,” he said, “but Mrs. Cameron does not like me to leave her, and Mark kindly offered to take the trouble off my hands.”

This was the most gracious thing he had said; this the nearest approach to friendliness, and Helen felt herself hating him less than she had supposed she should.  He was looking very pale and anxious, while there was on his face the light of a new joy, as if the little life begun so short a time ago had brought an added good to him, softening his haughty manner and making him even endurable to the prejudiced sister watching him so closely!

“Does Phillips know you are here?” he asked, answering his own query by ringing the bell and bidding Esther, who appeared, tell Phillips that Miss Lennox had arrived and wished for supper, explaining to Helen that since Katy’s illness they had dined at three, as that accommodated them the best.

This done and Helen’s baggage ordered to her room, he seemed to think he had discharged his duty as host, and as Mark had left he began to grow fidgety, for a tete-a-tete with Helen was not what he desired.  He had said to her all he could think to say, for it never once occurred to him to inquire after the deacon’s family.  He had asked for Dr. Grant, but his solicitude went no further, and the inmates of the farmhouse might have been dead and buried for aught he knew to the contrary.  The omission was not made purposely, but because he really did not feel enough of interest in people so widely different from himself even to ask for them, much less to suspect how Helen’s blood boiled as she detected the omission and imputed it to intended slight, feeling so glad when he at last excused himself, saying he must go back to Katy, but would send his mother down to see her.  His mother.  Then she was there, the one whom Helen dreaded most of all, whom she had invested with every possible terror, hoping now that she would not be in haste to come down.  She might have spared herself anxiety on this point, as the lady in question was not anxious to meet a person who, could she have had her way, would not have been there at all.

From the first moment of consciousness after the long hours of suffering, Katy had asked for Helen, rather than her mother, feeling that the former would be more welcome, and could more easily conform to their customs.