stay only five minutes more with him, she shook her head and said faintly, "No, I am too tired now, I can bear no more "; and as she left him the thought rushed into her mind, "Perhaps he is right. I do not love him as I ought; it is not yet too late."
It was in this mood that Amelia found her. One word of encouragement would have given her spirit to break off her marriage; but Amelia, who had been in love with Mr. Trevor from the first hour of their acquaintance down to the present speaking, could not realize her sister's feelings, and gave the only advice that she would herself have taken in Helen's position. Helen went down to dinner irresolute. Nothing in Lord Teviot's manner tended to reconcile her to him; and She thought that in the course of the evening she would bravely seek him to dissolve their engagement. But perhaps he saw something in her ease of manner that alarmed him: dinner, that useful counsellor, had smoothed his ruffled temper; perhaps the instinct that always leads a man to foresee when an impending explanation is not likely to end in his favour prompted him to divine that he should have the worse of this. And the result was, that when he came into the drawing-room, and saw Helen conversing gaily with Mrs. Douglas, he drew quietly towards her, and sat down, looking very penitent, on a wretched, hard, cane chair with a straight back, immediately behind her. Gradually he edged himself into the conversation, took an opportunity of throwing Helen's work on the floor, partly that he might stoop for it with all Trevor's pliability, and partly that in the course of that process he might contrive to touch with his lips Helen's hand, unperceived even by the sharp-eyed Mrs. Douglas; and that amends being made, he took his accustomed place on the sofa by her side, and was so gentle and so pleasant that her resentment faded gradually away, and all her magnanimous resolutions were forgotten. Her misgivings as to the degree of affection
