CHAPTER XXVI.
If the vigour of Harley’s address had taken by surprise both friend and foe, not one in that assembly—not even the conscience-stricken Egerton—felt its effect so deeply as the assailed and startled Leonard. He was at first perfectly stunned by sarcasms which he so ill deserved; nor was it till after the assembly had broken up, that Leonard could even conjecture the cause which had provoked the taunt and barbed its dart. Evidently Harley had learned (but learned only in order to misconceive and to wrong) Leonard’s confession of love to Helen Digby. And now those implied accusations of disregard to the duties of common life not only galled the young man’s heart, but outraged his honour. He felt the generous indignation of manhood. He must see Lord L’Estrange at once, and vindicate himself,—vindicate Helen; for thus to accuse one was tacitly to asperse the other.
Extricating himself from his own enthusiastic partisans, Leonard went straight on foot towards Lansmere House. The Park palings touched close upon the town, with a shall turnstile for foot passengers. And as Leonard, availing himself of this entrance, had advanced some hundred yards or so through the park, suddenly, in the midst of that very copse in which Avenel had appointed to meet Leslie, he found himself face to face with Helen Digby herself.
Helen started, with a faint cry. But Leonard, absorbed in his own desire to justify both, hailed the sight, and did not pause to account for his appearance, nor to soothe her agitation.
“Miss Digby!” he exclaimed, throwing into his voice and manner that respect which often so cruelly divides the past familiarity from the present alienation, “Miss Digby, I rejoice to see you,—rejoice to ask your permission to relieve myself from a charge that in truth wounds even you, while levelled but at me. Lord L’Estrange has just implied, in public, that I—I—who owe him so much, who have honoured him so truly, that even the just resentment I now feel half seems to me the ingratitude with which he charges me, has implied that—ah! Miss Digby, I can scarcely command words to say what it so humiliates me to have heard. But you know how false is all accusation that either of us could deceive our common benefactor. Suffer me to repeat to your guardian what I presumed to say to you when we last met, what you answered, and state how I left your presence.”
“Oh, Leonard! yes; clear yourself in his eyes. Go! Unjust that he is, ungenerous Lord L’Estrange!”
“Helen Digby!” cried a voice, close at hand. “Of whom do you speak thus?”
At the sound of that voice Helen and Leonard both turned, and beheld Violante standing before them, her young beauty rendered almost sublime by the noble anger that lit her eyes, glowed in her cheeks, animated her stately form.
“Is it you who thus speak of Lord L’Estrange? You, Helen Digby,—you!”
From behind Violante now emerged Mr. Dale. “Softly, children,” he said; and placing one hand on Violante’s shoulder, he extended the other to Leonard. “What is this? Come hither to me, Leonard, and explain.”