The moment he turned the corner of the bed and saw the face on the
pillow, he knew in his soul that Helen was right, and that that was
no wicked youth who lay before him--one, however, who might well
have been passion-driven. There was the dark complexion and the
great soft yet wild eyes that came of tropical blood. Had not Helen
so plainly spoken of her brother, however, he would have thought he
saw before him a woman. The worn, troubled, appealing light that
overflowed rather than shone from his eyes, went straight to the
curate's heart.
Wingfold had had a brother, the only being in the world he had ever
loved tenderly; he had died young, and a thin film of ice had since
gathered over the well of his affections; but now suddenly this ice
broke and vanished, and his heart yearned over the suffering youth.
He had himself been crying to God, not seldom in sore trouble, and
now, ere, as it seemed, he had himself been heard, here was a sad
brother crying to him for help. Nor was this all; the reading of the
gospel story had roused in his heart a strange yet most natural
longing after the face of that man of whom he read such lovely
things, and thence, unknown to himself, had come a reverence and a
love for his kind, which now first sprang awake to his consciousness
in the feeling that drew him towards Leopold.
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