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 grateful to her as a friend of his daughter; she had even pleased herself with the feeling that he liked her, in her humble place, as a woman of some cultivation and many sympathetic points of relation with himself; but that he loved her,—­that this deep, fine nature, in a man so far removed from her in outward circumstance, should have found its counterpart in one whom life had treated so coldly as herself,—­that Dudley Venner should stake his happiness on a breath of hers,—­poor Helen Darley’s,—­it was all a surprise, a confusion, a kind of fear not wholly fearful.  Ah, me! women know what it is, that mist over the eyes, that trembling in the limbs, that faltering of the voice, that sweet, shame-faced, unspoken confession of weakness which does not wish to be strong, that sudden overflow in the soul where thoughts loose their hold on each other and swim single and helpless in the flood of emotion,—­women know what it is!

No doubt she was a little frightened and a good deal bewildered, and that her sympathies were warmly excited for a friend to whom she had been brought so near, and whose loneliness she saw and pitied.  She lost that calm self-possession she had hoped to maintain.

“If I thought that I could make you happy,—­if I should speak from my heart, and not my reason,—­I am but a weak woman,—­yet if I can be to you—­What can I say?”

What more could this poor, dear Helen say?

“Elbridge, harness the horses and take Miss Darley back to the school.”

What conversation had taken place since Helen’s rhetorical failure is not recorded in the minutes from which this narrative is constructed.  But when the man who had been summoned had gone to get the carriage ready, Helen resumed something she had been speaking of.

“Not for the world.  Everything must go on just as it has gone on, for the present.  There are proprieties to be consulted.  I cannot be hard with you, that out of your very affliction has sprung this—­this well—­you must name it for me,—­but the world will never listen to explanations.  I am to be Helen Darley, lady assistant in Mr. Silas Peckham’s school, as long as I see fit to hold my office.  And I mean to attend to my scholars just as before; so that I shall have very little time for visiting or seeing company.  I believe, though, you are one of the Trustees and a Member of the Examining Committee; so that, if you should happen to visit the school, I shall try to be civil to you.”