Tales and Novels Helen Author:Maria Edgeworth Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: dear young friend, for your sympathy; you can understand me, you can feel with me." Sympathy, intelligent, quick, warm, unwearied, unweariable, such as Helen'... more »s, is really a charming accomplishment in a friend ; the only obligation a proud person is never too proud to receive ; and it was most gratifying to Helen to be allowed to sympathise with Lady Davenant — one who, in general, never spoke of herself, or unveiled her private feelings, even to those who lived with her on terms of intimacy. Helen felt responsible for the confidence granted to her thus upon credit, and a strong ambition was excited in her mind to justify the high opinion her superior friend had formed of her. She determined to become all that she was believed to be; as the flame of a taper suddenly rises towards what is held over it, her spirit mounted to the point to which her friend pointed. CHAPTER V. Helen's perfect happiness at Clarendon Park was not of long duration. People who have not been by nature blessed or cursed with nice feelings, or who have well rubbed off their delicacy in roughing through the world, can be quite happy, or at least happy enough without ascertaining whether they are really esteemed or liked by those with whom they live. Many, and some of high degree, when well sheltered and fed, and provided with all the necessaries, and surrounded by all the luxuries of life, and with appearances tolerably well kept up by outward manner, care little or nought about the inside sentiments. But Helen was neither of the case-hardened philosophic, or the naturally obtuse-feeling class; she belonged to the overanxious. Surrounded at Clarendon Park with all the splendour of life, and with the immediate expectation of seeing and being seen by the first society in England; with the certainty al...« less