He missed her sorely. At that
very moment, he was in great practical need of her help, her guidance.
Whereas it was _he_--worse luck!--who must be the stumbling and
unwelcomed guide of Rachel's child! How, in the name of mystery, had the
child grown up so different from the mother? Well, impatience wouldn't
help him--he must set his mind to it. That scoundrel, Jim Donald!
CHAPTER IV
Mrs. Friend passed a somewhat wakeful night after the scene in which
Helena Pitstone had bestowed her first confidences on her new companion.
For Lucy Friend the experience had been unprecedented and agitating. She
had lived in a world where men and women do not talk much about
themselves, and as a rule instinctively avoid thinking much about
themselves, as a habit tending to something they call "morbid." This at
least had been the tone in her parents' house. The old woman in Lancaster
Gate had not been capable either of talking or thinking about herself,
except as a fretful animal with certain simple bodily wants. In Helena,
Lucy Friend had for the first time come cross the type of which the world
is now full--men and women, but especially women, who have no use any
longer for the reticence of the past, who desire to know all they
possibly can about themselves, their own thoughts and sensations, their
own peculiarities and powers, all of which are endlessly interesting to
them; and especially to the intellectual _elite_ among them.
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