Every lady sees, of course, that Helen was quite right; but perhaps here and there one will think that Dudley Venner was all wrong,—­that he was too hasty,—­that he should have been too full of his recent grief for such a confession as he has just made, and the passion from which it sprung.  Perhaps they do not understand the sudden recoil of a strong nature long compressed.  Perhaps they have not studied the mystery of allotropism in the emotions of the human heart.  Go to the nearest chemist and ask him to show you some of the dark-red phosphorus which will not burn without fierce heating, but at 500 deg.  Fahrenheit, changes back again to the inflammable substance we know so well.  Grief seems more like ashes than like fire; but as grief has been love once, so it may become love again.  This is emotional allotropism.

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 haalth, 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 “demage 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—­