Mary Elton was not one who—young-lady-like—"enjoyed a good cry;" tears were rather a pain than a relief to her, and seldom were they forced from her save by a sudden shock, such as her sister's discovery, and the laying bare of the secret which she believed to be hidden deep in the recesses of her own heart. After a few minutes her sobs ceased, and she became calmer; drawing back a little from Helena's arms, she said, coldly—
"You have stolen into my confidence, Helena, so I have no power to give or to refuse it!"
"Oh, Mary!" and Helena's tone told how much her sister's coldness pained her.
Mary felt it, and suddenly bending over her, she kissed her fondly, saying, "Foolish child, do not think that I am not grateful for all your affection, or that I do not return it. Ah, Helena, you don't know how I love your frank, impulsive nature, and how I envy you your light-heartedness, your power of forgetting, in the enjoyment of the hour, all pain and sorrow; but I cannot be tender now; tenderness would unnerve me, would break down the barrier of self-restraint. Child, you don't know what it is when we habitually calm people burst the bonds of the so-called principles which had before guided us; all seems to give way around us, and the passion by which we are possessed becomes fearful. Yes, you are right,—I do love this man, who cares not for me, and I hate her who, though it be for a moment, seems to interest him; and dear, surpassingly dear as he is to me, I would rather see him dead than loving and beloved by her. I would plunge into the fiercest fire that ever raged to tear her from him!"
She paused and sat with her head erect, and her teeth clenched, glaring before her as if, in imagination at least, she saw her yet unconscious rival by his side. This burst of passion so amazed Helena that she could not utter a word, and before she had recovered from her astonishment Mary continued in a calmer tone, "I trust you fully, Helena, and shall gratefully—yes, I have fallen low enough for that—gratefully accept any help you can give me. But all this time I have not answered your question as to whether I will forward your wishes as to Mr. Caulfield. First tell me clearly how the case stands, and what you wish me to do."
"The case stands thus, Mary: Mr. Caulfield has asked me over and over again to let him speak to mamma, but were he to do so I should probably only be forbidden to see him, and I love him too dearly to let him risk the refusal which I know he would get. So, as I have already told you, it is too late to think of sparing me pain by preventing my meeting him; it would but take away from me all the happiness I can now have—that of seeing him occasionally. What I want you to do, Mary, is to help me in this, and still further, to try to incline mamma more favourably towards him, and you have great influence with her. If you will do this I will promise not to marry him for a year, at all events, without her consent; but if you drive me to desperation, if you deprive me of the delight of being with him sometimes, I cannot answer for myself."
Helena had grown serious enough, and her voice and manner borrowed some of her sister's determination, as she continued, "And as for mamma's rich favourite, Mr. Mainwaring, nothing on earth could induce me to marry him! It is all very well for calm, quiet people to marry from respect and esteem, as they call it, but were I to do it, I know I should run away before a year had gone by. Mary, you would not like to see me wretched, and I am sure that you would do more to save me from being so than any one else, therefore have I asked you to help me now, and you will?" Helena laid her head upon her sister's knee, and her arm tightened its clasp around her waist.
Mary remained silent for a moment or two; then she said, "Yes, I will help you, poor child, as far as I can, for I see that in your bright sunny way you do love Mr. Caulfield. The cold, calculating code under which we have been schooled could never be yours. I, being of a less easily excited nature, accepted what I was told, and I was fast becoming what you described as the model young lady. I met Mr. Earnscliffe, and thought of him first as eligible, in obedience to what I knew were mamma's wishes; but suddenly I found that something, the existence of which I dreamed not of, had taken possession of me, and mastered me. What had become of all the trite rules and maxims of which I had heard so much, and which until then I had obeyed? They were all swept away by that rush of feeling which forced upon me the conviction of their emptiness and falsehood, that there was no real principle in any of them; the reaction carried all before it, and left nothing but this wild reckless passion, goaded as it is by the mortification of loving unloved.... But he shall love me, or, at least, he shall not be another's!"
Again she had become excited, and Helena seemed half frightened at her vehemence; but the next moment she added, with a complete change of manner, "Enough of myself. Thank heaven you are not like me, Helena! Did you not ask me to go somewhere with you to-day?"
"Yes, to the Catacombs; if you come, mamma will not think it necessary to send my aunt to guard me. We can go with Mrs. Penton; I half promised her that we would join her, and she said she would call for us at two o'clock if I sent her word that we wished to go; so, if you consent, I will send to her now."