By this time I had a little recovered this overwhelming blow; and I resolved in self-defence, and in defence of my husband's character, to tell her I must believe she was mistaken in thinking she saw Pendarves come out of Lady Bell's house; but whether that were true or false, I must request her to keep such communications to herself in future, as a wife was the last person whom any one should presume to inform of the errors of her husband. But company came in; and soon after my uncle drove up to the house in his travelling carriage, and in a few minutes more they were both on the road to Cornwall. If Seymour, when he came in, had found me alone with Mrs. Pendarves, he would have attributed the strange abstraction of my manner to some information which she had given me; but he now imputed it to the head-ach of which I complained; and when my visitors went he urged me to go and lie down.
This was unfortunate, as I should have disliked excessively to tell him what his aunt had seen, and to let him observe how uneasy the communication had made me; for I was aware that a wife whose jealousy is so very apt to take alarm, is as troublesome to a husband as one whose nerves are so weak that she goes into a fit at the slightest noise, and starts at the mere shutting of a door. Still, my husband's ignorance of the cause of my indisposition was a great trial to me; for it forced me to have, for the first time, a secret from him. And he too, it seemed, was keeping a secret from me; for, spite of my entreaties that he would always tell me himself what it might grieve me to hear from others, he had called on Lady Bell Singleton, without telling me that he had done so!
Alas! I did indeed lie down, and I did indeed darken my room; but it was to hide my agitation and my tears: nor till Pendarves went out to dinner, which, with some difficulty I prevailed on him to do, did I suffer the light to penetrate into my apartments, or my swollen eye-lids to be seen of any one. But then I rose; then, too, I rallied my spirits; for, in the first place I was cheered by my husband's affectionate unwillingness to leave me, and in the next I had nearly convinced myself that Mrs. Pendarves had not seen him when she fancied she did.
By this resolute endeavour to look only on the bright side, I was enabled when my husband returned, which he did very early, to receive him with unforced smiles and cheerfulness.
The next day we set off immediately after breakfast on our journey home; and I met my mother with a countenance so happy, that the look of anxious inquiry with which she beheld me was immediately exchanged for one of tearful joy.
"Thank God! my dearest child," she fervently exclaimed, "that I see you again, and see you thus!"
Why had she looked so anxious, and so inquiringly? and why was she thus so evidently surprised, as well as rejoiced?
No doubt, thought I, she is in correspondence with our gossiping aunt, and she has told my mother all she told me.—No doubt, also, she has all along been that secret source whence was derived my mother's fear of uniting me to Pendarves.—But then, was not her information derived from her husband, and was it not always only too authentic?
As these thoughts passed my mind, it was well for me that my mother was talking to Seymour, and did not observe me.
Two months had greatly embellished the appearance of our abode; and it looked so green and gay, and was so fragrant from the summer flowers, that Pendarves, always alive to present objects and present impressions, exclaimed as we followed my mother through the grounds, "Dearest Helen! why should we ever leave this paradise of sweets? Here let us live and die!"