Helen was ready for her; to have to be so ready was part of the pain. 'Well, in a sense perhaps, it was all she could do, wasn't it? when she found that she couldn't go on with Gerald, and really wanted Franklin at last.'
'Rather late in the day to come to that conclusion when Mr. Kane was engaged to another woman.'
'Well—he was engaged to another woman only because Althea wouldn't have him.'
'Oh!—Ah!' Aunt Grizel was non-committal on this point. 'She lets him seem to jilt you.'
'Perhaps she does.' Helen's placidity was profound.
'I know Mr. Kane, he wouldn't have been willing to do that unless pressure had been brought to bear.'
'Pressure was, I suppose; the pressure of his own feeling and of Althea's unhappiness. He saw that his chance had come and he had to take it. He couldn't go on and marry me, could he, Aunt Grizel? when he saw the chance had come for him to take,' said Helen reasonably.
'Well,' said Aunt Grizel, 'the main point isn't, of course, what the people who know of your engagement will think—we don't mind that. What we want to decide on is what we think ourselves. I keep my own counsel, for I know you'd rather I did, and you keep yours. But what about this money? He writes to me that he wants me to take over from him quite a little fortune, so that when I die I can leave you about a thousand a year. He has thought it out; it isn't too much and it isn't too little. He is altogether a remarkable man; his tact never fails him. Of course it's nothing compared with what he wanted to do for you; but at the same time it's so much that, to put it brutally, you get for nothing the safety I wanted you to marry him to get.'
Helen's delicate and weary head now turned on its pillow to look at Aunt Grizel. They looked at each other for some time in silence, and in the silence they took counsel together. After the interchange Helen could say, smiling a little, 'We mustn't put it brutally; that is the one thing we must never do. Not only for his sake,' she wanted Aunt Grizel to see it clearly, 'but for mine.'
'How shall we put it, then? It's hardly a possible thing to accept, yet, if he hadn't believed you would let him make you safe, would he have gone back to Miss Jakes? One sees his point.'