He stopped at the Manor House, for it was only beginning to be late,
to inquire after Leopold. Helen received him with her usual
coldness--a manner which was in part assumed for self-protection,
for in his presence she always felt rebuked, and which had the
effect of a veil between them to hide from her much of the curate's
character that might otherwise have been intelligible to her.
Leopold, she said, was a little better, but Wingfold walked home
thinking what a happy thing it would be if God were to take him
away.

His interest in Helen deepened and deepened. He could not help
admiring her strength of character even when he saw it spent for
worse than nought; and her devotion to her brother was lovely,
notwithstanding the stains of selfishness that spotted it. Her moral
standard was indeed far from lofty, and as to her spiritual nature,
that as yet appeared nowhere. And yet the growth in her was
marvellous when he thought of what she had seemed before this
trouble came. One evening as he left Leopold, he heard her singing,
and stood on the stair to listen. And to listen was to marvel. For
her voice, instead of being hard and dry, as when he heard it
before, was, without any loss of elasticity, now liquid and
mellifluous, and full of feeling. Its tones were borne along like
the leaves on the wild west wind of Shelley's sonnet. And the
longing of the curate to help her from that moment took a fresh
departure, and grew and grew. But as the hours and days and weeks
passed, and the longing found no outlet, it turned to an almost