“Is Helen come?” said Elsie, when she heard, with her fine sense quickened by the irritability of sickness, a light footfall on the stair, with a cadence unlike that of any inmate of the house.

“It’s a strange woman’s step,” said Old Sophy, who, with her exclusive love for Elsie, was naturally disposed to jealousy of a new-comer.  “Let Ol’ Sophy set at ‘th’ foot o’ th’ bed, if th’ young missis sets by th’ piller,—­won’ y’, darlin’?  The’ ‘s nobody that’s white can love y’ as th’ of black woman does;—­don’ sen’ her away, now, there ’s a dear soul!”

Elsie motioned her to sit in the place she had pointed to, and Helen at that moment entered the room.  Dudley Venner followed her.

“She is your patient,” he said, “except while the Doctor is here.  She has been longing to have you with her, and we shall expect you to make her well in a few days.”

So Helen Darley found herself established in the most unexpected manner as an inmate of the Dudley mansion.  She sat with Elsie most of the time, by day and by night, soothing her, and trying to enter into her confidence and affections, if it should prove that this strange creature was really capable of truly sympathetic emotions.

What was this unexplained something which came between her soul and that of every other human being with whom she was in relations?  Helen perceived, or rather felt, that she had, folded up in the depths of her being, a true womanly nature.  Through the cloud that darkened her aspect, now and then a ray would steal forth, which, like the smile of stern and solemn people, was all the more impressive from its contrast with the expression she wore habitually.  It might well be that pain and fatigue had changed her aspect; but, at any rate, Helen looked into her eyes without that nervous agitation which their cold glitter had produced on her when they were full of their natural light.  She felt sure that her mother must have been a lovely, gentle woman.  There were gleams of a beautiful nature shining through some ill-defined medium which disturbed and made them flicker and waver, as distant images do when seen through the rippling upward currents of heated air.  She loved, in her own way, the old black woman, and seemed to keep up a kind of silent communication with her, as if they did not require the use of speech.  She appeared to be tranquillized by the presence of Helen, and loved to have her seated at the bedside.  Yet something, whatever it was, prevented her from opening her heart to her kind companion; and even now there were times when she would lie looking at her, with such a still, watchful, almost dangerous expression, that Helen would sigh, and change her place, as persons do whose breath some cunning orator had been sucking out of them with his spongy eloquence, so that, when he stops, they must get some air and stir about, or they feel as if they should be half smothered and palsied.

It was too much to keep guessing what was the meaning of all this.  Helen determined to ask Old Sophy some questions which might probably throw light upon her doubts.  She took the opportunity one evening when Elsie was lying asleep and they were both sitting at some distance from her bed.