sure we shall have been too much occupied with each other"—and he smiled rather scornfully—"to think of arranging a pleasant party, and that we shall be obliged to her for inviting a few people we all know."
"I am not sure that I am obliged to her just now," said Helen, hurrying on through her sentence. "My letters had given me the idea of a totally different plan. The Trevors have been obliged to go to Walden, and papa and mamma are left quite alone; and I thought we might surprise them with a visit now, instead of next month, when you promised to go to them. How I should like it! but, if we cannot put off Lady Portmore"
"We neither can nor will," said Lord Teviot. "I am sorry you are already tired of your own home; but, such as it is, I am afraid I must trouble you to stay in it. And though my friends are not, of course, to be compared to yours, I cannot begin by affronting them all."
Helen made no answer, and after a moment's pause took up her work. Lord Teviot walked to the window, and began playing with the tame bullfinch that stood in it. The silence that ensued was long and awful, but was broken by him as he said, in a constrained voice, "Have you had no other letter but that from your mother?"
"None of any consequence."
"Did not Beaufort write? I thought I saw his hand."
"There is his letter; there are all my letters, if you like to see them," said Helen—a faint suspicion dawning on her mind that Lord Teviot was jealous of her family. He seemed to waver, but she placed them on the table, and, moving her work-frame nearer to the window, left the field open to him. He took up the letters with a slight sensation of shame. Lady Eskdale's was as usual affectionate and amiable; and though she expressed strongly her wish to see her daughter, she said she knew it was not likely Lord Teviot could leave his home again so soon;
