Searching
the newspapers, Helen heard that a week had elapsed between the
"mysterious murder of a young lady in Yorkshire" and the night on
which he came to her window.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
SISTERHOOD.
"Well, Poldie, after all I would rather be you than she!" cried
Helen indignantly, when she had learned the whole story.
It was far from the wisest thing to say, but she meant it, and
clasped her brother to her bosom.
Straightway the poor fellow began to search for all that man could
utter in excuse, nay in justification, not of himself, but of the
woman he had murdered, appropriating all the blame. But Helen had
recognised in Emmeline the selfishness which is the essential
murderer, nor did it render her more lenient towards her that the
same moment, with a start of horror, she caught a transient glimpse
of the same in herself. But the discovery wrought in the other
direction, and the tenderness she now lavished upon Leopold left all
his hopes far behind. Her brother's sin had broken wide the
feebly-flowing springs of her conscience, and she saw that in
idleness and ease and drowsiness of soul, she had been forgetting
and neglecting even the being she loved best in the universe.
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