It is a misfortune for the historian that he is unable to present events as they really happened, simultaneously, but must be content to relate them one after another, thereby unavoidably impressing his reader with a false idea of the lapse of time. The same morning that Rereworth made his expedition to Lambeth, Mrs. Pendarrel paid a visit to her daughter in Cavendish Square. Restless, but languid; dejected, but unforgiving, she came to vent her querulousness on Mrs. Winston, in complaint and reproach. She wished also to learn, without showing the desire, what news had reached town respecting the fugitives. She could not close her heart entirely against the memory of her child. She liked to hear her mentioned, even when she answered the intelligence with anger and contempt. And so she came to Gertrude almost daily, to listen and to abuse.

She now entered the house, as usual, without ceremony, and proceeded to the room where she commonly found Mrs. Winston; but on this occasion Gertrude was not there. Her mother looked listlessly at two or three of the books upon the table, and wandered into the adjoining apartment, absent in mind, but disappointed at not seeing her she sought. Here she lingered a few minutes more, and then passed on into the smaller room, where, as she well recollected, she had encountered Randolph Trevethlan. A young lady, sitting with her back to the door, turned as it opened, and Mrs. Pendarrel immediately recognized Randolph's companion at the opera, his sister. Helen also remembered the original of her miniature, and rose from her chair as Esther advanced.

"What!" the last-named lady exclaimed, fixing her keen eyes upon Helen. "Have I been mocked? Have I been the sport of a paltry conspiracy? Has my daughter been nursing the thief, and condoling with me upon the robbery? Fawning upon me with hypocritical lamentations, and sheltering those who wronged me? For I see it all. It was here the plot was hatched; here the correspondence was managed; here the flight was arranged. Did not Gertrude always boast that she would thwart my schemes? Yet I hardly thought she would go so far as this."

"Madam," Helen ejaculated in great confusion, "madam, you do Mrs. Winston wrong. She knew nothing of my brother's design. Neither did I. But let your blame only fall on me, for I was the unconscious means of its execution."

"Do you dare to answer me, Miss Trevethlan?" Esther asked angrily. "And what do you here? What does one of your name in the house of one of mine? Name! What is your name? You have none. What business has one like you to be here?"

"I am an intruder, madam," Helen answered, the tears rising in her soft eyes—"I have felt it, and know it. But I came here before this unhappy matter. The invitation was very kind. We were very poor. I would relieve my brother."

"Poor! did you say, Miss Trevethlan?" exclaimed Esther. "Yes; and you will be still poorer before many days are gone! Unhappy? No, no; you did not think so. The beggar does not call it unhappy when he inveigles away a rich heiress. But it is a mistake. She has nothing. You will be no richer for the stolen marriage; neither you nor your brother, Miss Trevethlan."

"Oh, madam," said Helen in much distress, "I wish you could read in my heart. You would spare me these reproaches. You do not know how I deplore what has occurred. The loss of our home, the poverty and sorrow you speak of, everything I would have endured, rather than my brother had done this. We want nothing of you, madam, nothing but forgiveness; and you may spare sarcasms which are undeserved."

"Would your brother ask my forgiveness?" said Mrs. Pendarrel. "Was there a word of the kind in Mildred's letter? No, Miss Trevethlan; forgiveness will never be asked, and never be granted. Why; do you not hate me yourself? You must have learned from infancy to detest my name. Was not Pendarrel pointed at as the destroyer of Trevethlan? Am not I the author of the desolation which has fallen upon your head? Truly, Miss Trevethlan, it might rouse your father's spirit from his grave, to feel that one of his children dwelt under the roof of one of mine."

"No, madam," Helen exclaimed, almost as vehemently as she was addressed—"a thousand times no. Not till lately did I know there was any difference."

"'Tis untrue!" said Esther. "'Tis nonsense. You were born to hate. You were bequeathed an inheritance of hate. You accepted it. Did not you send me with scorn from your doors? It was your turn then. It is mine now. Hate breeds hate."

"And on which side did it begin, if it were so?" Helen asked. "On ours? Madam, were we not treated as if hatred were indeed our only inheritance? Was not my brother insulted with an offer of charity? I speak his mind, and not my own, for I thought the offer was kind. But I see now that he was right."

"You will be glad to have the offer repeated ere long," said Esther bitterly.

"You wronged us then, madam," Helen said, "and you wrong us now. We, alone on the earth, young, mourning the only parent we had ever known, little likely were we to hate our nearest connections. Was hatred bequeathed to us? No, madam. I might deem our inherited feelings were far other, for this portrait was the last companion of our poor father. They found it upon his heart when he died."

Esther caught the miniature from Helen's hand, and gazed earnestly at it for some seconds. Then she pressed it to her lips in a kind of ecstacy.

"He loved me to the last," she murmured.

But the transport passed away as rapidly as it came. Melancholy, stern and dark, fell over Mrs. Pendarrel's brow. She clasped the miniature upon her bosom.

"Girl," she said, almost in a whisper, "you give me great joy and sorrow inexpressible. I have been desperately wronged. My life has been a blank. I cannot change on a sudden. I do not know what to think. Let me keep this portrait."

And she departed from the room and from the house, leaving Helen bewildered by a host of perplexing reflections. She remembered what Randolph said concerning that miniature, but she was unaware of the promise exacted from him at their father's death-bed. She scarcely understood in what manner the law-suit had been only the final step in a career of vengeance. But she felt that she had been grievously insulted, and she perceived the ambiguity of her situation at Mrs. Winston's. She resolved on returning to Hampstead without delay.

It was a pity, for she had been an angel of peace to Gertrude. She had taught the husband and wife to know one another, and the knowledge might soon become affection. Yet her hostess confessed to herself that the resolution was correct, even though she was ignorant of the conversation which had immediately inspired it. She did not so much as attempt to delay its execution, and the same afternoon found Helen once more an inmate of Mr. Peach's modest, but pleasant and pretty dwelling.

Comfort followed her there. Rereworth's letter to Polydore Riches came to revive hope, and to bring oblivion of the affronts and menaces of the morning. The news exhilarated the chaplain's drooping spirits, and inclined him to regard the elopement with less severity. And Helen thought with gratitude of the writer, and perhaps remembered those readings of Scott and Byron in Mrs. Winston's little drawing-room.

Besides this, the fugitives were now approaching the metropolis, and might possibly arrive the same night. Here were copious sources of conversation to fill the evening when the chaplain talked with Helen in the pleasant parlour, where she had sat during the past winter, and which had witnessed the extinction of all those hopes, so long and so fondly cherished at Trevethlan Castle, the day-dreams of Merlin's Cave.

If Mrs. Pendarrel inflicted much pain in her short interview with Helen, she did not quit it herself unscathed. The sight of her portrait aroused a thousand recollections, familiar indeed to Esther's hours of reverie, but never so vividly presented before. She thought of the day when she permitted that miniature to be taken from her neck. In the morning she hung it there, not without an idea that it might pass into another's possession before night. Often had the favour been solicited by the lover, and as often refused by the coquette. But at last assiduity might triumph over waywardness. Side by side they strolled over the lawns of Pendarrel, enjoying converse such as is only derided by the unhappy wights who have never shared it. There was a secluded little pool, formed by the rivulet which murmured through the wilderness, surrounded by flowering shrubs, and over-arched so closely by spreading forest-trees, that the sunshine scarcely penetrated to the surface of the water. It was in that bower, under the thickest of the leafy canopy, that Henry Trevethlan detached the miniature from the chain by which it hung, and his lips met those of Esther in the first kiss of love. How well she remembered it now! Every little circumstance, the attitude in which they stood, the few whispered words, came back to her mind, fresh as the things of yesterday. A bright-winged butterfly alighted for a moment upon her wrist, and he called her Psyche, his soul, without whom he should die. The butterfly rested but a second—was its flight ominous of what had occurred since? And had he virtually died? Had his subsequent existence been a mere life in death? Had his soul indeed remained always with her? So, Esther thought, it would seem. And had he forgiven the ruin into which he was driven by despair? Had he pardoned the despair itself, the wreck of all his hopes and feelings, the anguish which abided with him to the last?

Questions like these passed rapidly through Esther's mind, while she gazed on the fair young face which once had been her own. Very different was her aspect now. The round and glowing cheeks had become hollow and pale. The smooth white forehead was furrowed with the lines of sorrow. Silver threads mingled with the dark tresses. The eyes, in the miniature deep and inscrutable, were now wild and bright. The passions of the girl had been developed in the woman, and had left their trace on every feature.

And then Esther turned to self-justification. Had she made no atonement? Had she suffered nothing? Had her heart been unwasted? Resolutely as she had striven to repress all memory of that early dream, had she succeeded in the attempt? Was not the lava still hot beneath the foliage which grew over it? Had not the smouldering fire broken forth anew on the news of Henry's death? And again she thought she had been hardly used by the precipitation with which he abandoned her. It was cruel to afford her no chance of reconciliation. If he might charge her with vanity or wilfulness, surely she might accuse him of rancour and pride. If the happiness of her lover had been shattered by the storm, neither had her own escaped its ravages.

She had endeavoured to forget them in the gratification of her love of rule, and her eager pursuit of revenge. The first she enjoyed in the management of her own household, the second in the downfall of Trevethlan. Ambition and appetite grew with what they fed on. "Pendar'l and Trevethlan shall own one name." Not till that prediction had been fulfilled to the letter, and to her own glory, could Esther rest. Her old lover had departed from the scene; she prolonged the contest with his children. They increased her ardour by the mode in which they met her first advances. For a season she seemed to be foiled. But the check gave new vigour to her never-dying wrath.

And before long the orphans crossed her path. And soon he, the heir of all his father's pride, encountered her, face to face, as the companion of her child. She had trembled to think of what that meeting might call forth. But then she learned the tale, which would fulfil all her desires to an extent beyond her dreams, and forgot her danger in the exultation of approaching triumph. Triumph came, but only as the precursor of defeat; for her enemy, ruined and dishonoured, had suborned the affection of her daughter, and made her house desolate in the very hour of victory.

Yes, scandal made merry with the name of Pendarrel. Esther, with all her rigid discipline, with all her cherished authority, had seen the child, for whose marriage with another her word was pledged, elude her control, and steal to a furtive union with the man whom she had been labouring to bring to want and shame. It was nearly enough to deprive her of her reason. No time was this to think of forgiveness. She would not believe that Helen Trevethlan was so innocent as she pretended. The production of the miniature was a theatrical trick. The picture should revive the memory of a never-forgiven wrong.

Let the suit then be pressed. Let there be no respite. Let calamity fall fast and heavy. Let disobedience and presumption meet their just reward. But where was the agent? Where was he who had pointed out the path of revenge? What had he said when she last saw him? Better, Esther thought scornfully, better even that match than this. And what meant his dark insinuations? Had he not dared to threaten?

Langour crept over the muser. She began to grow aweary of the sun. She felt as if her self-control were slipping from her grasp. Shadowy fears beset her. She did not like to be alone. She was glad when her husband came home from his official duties; and he became seriously alarmed at her altered demeanour. She seemed to be sinking into a state of lethargy, which might affect her mind. Mr. Pendarrel sent to beg Mrs. Winston to come and watch by her mother, who was evidently very ill. And Gertrude came, but for some time her presence seemed only to irritate the invalid. It might be observed that from about this day Esther entirely discontinued her old practice of calling her husband by the name which he had abandoned to obtain her hand.