"And will you not allow him to have one interview with me, before he returns to Oxford?"
"No, I will not expose you to his dangerous eloquence: as he is not really in love with you, he would have more self-possession, and plead his cause so much the better."
"Not in love with me!"
"No; his attachment is now irritated by obstacles, and also stimulated by fancied duty; but could he, if he really felt a virtuous passion, maintain a disgraceful connexion in London, as I know him to do? Helen, my child! what ails you?" Here her voice sounded like thunder in my ears, and I fainted.
I had certainly been led to believe that Seymour led a life of general dissipation, and I had not allowed myself to attempt to define the exact nature of the charges against him; but when I heard him positively accused of an improper attachment to one individual object, a mixed feeling of jealousy, disgust, misery, and indignation came over me, with the sickness of death, and for the first time in my life I lost all consciousness. How long I remained insensible, I know not; but when I recovered, I found my mother weeping over me—not because she had feared for my life, but because she did fear for my peace of mind. She was consoled, however, when I assured her, that from that moment I should think it my duty to drive Seymour Pendarves from my mind, and that I had no longer any difficulty in submitting to her wishes. She kissed me, called me her dear, good girl, and we parted for the night.
The next morning was the morning of the funeral. Lady Helen had desired it might be a private one, and had she not, it could not have been otherwise; for Lord Seymour, though not an old man, was fallen into a state of imbecility; Lord Mountgeorge was at Lisbon, attending his dying wife; and Mr. Pendarves, our great-uncle, was confined in Cornwall by the gout.
"Poor Seymour!" cried my mother, as she heard this account of the family; "there is much to be said in your excuse; for how completely has he been left to himself, amidst the dangers of a metropolis!"
My mother, when she said this, was certainly thinking aloud; but my hearing her had, at that moment, no bad effect on me, as my jealousy remained unappeased, and my mortification unsoothed, and nothing could reinstate him as yet in my estimation: nay, I believed I should see him the next day without any emotion that could be attributed to him as the cause of it.
When we reached the house of mourning, we found Seymour anxiously expecting us. On seeing me, he seized my hand, and, unable to speak, kissed it repeatedly, then turned away in tears; and, I must own, at that moment I forgot his unworthiness and my own resolution, and remembered only his sorrow and his apparent affection. My mother might be right, but I began to suspect she might be wrong. All these feelings, however, were soon swallowed up in those of deep and tender sorrow. The procession began; and, clinging to each other's arm for support, my mother and I followed the unsteady steps of the chief mourner. But why need I dwell on the details of a scene so common? Suffice, that Seymour did not return with us: he remained in the church, in order to give way to the lately suppressed agonies of his heart. My mother wished to do the same; but she respected the sacredness of his sorrow, and she could visit the vault at another time.
The rest of the day was spent by Seymour in visits to those who had been maintained or assisted by Lady Helen, in order that he might personally assure them that his intention was to do all she would have done, had life been spared to her. Having thus performed his duty to the utmost, he appeared to my mother's eye to have recovered some of his usual brilliancy of countenance. The next night he was to return to Oxford. In the afternoon of that day, he called at our house, and requested to see my mother and me.