Lady Eleanor looked up with astonishment, for she could not conceive the meaning of the words, nor in what quarter they were to be reported.
“I mean, madam,” said Leonard, “that when I present myself to the Colonel, I may take the liberty to mention having seen you.”
“Do you speak of my husband, sir,—Colonel Darcy?” said Lady Eleanor, with a very different degree of interest in her look and accent.
“Yes, madam,” said Leonard, with a kind of forced courage in his manner. “I hope to be under his command in a few days.”
“Indeed, sir!” said Lady Eleanor, with animation; “I did not know that you had served, still less that you were about to join the army once more.”
Leonard blushed deeply, and he suddenly grew deadly pale, while, in a voice scarcely louder than a mere whisper, he muttered, “So then, madam, Colonel Darcy has never spoken of me to you?”
Lady Eleanor, who misunderstood the meaning of the question, seemed slightly confused as she replied, “I have no recollection of it, sir,—I cannot call up at this moment having heard your name from my husband.”
“I ought to have known it,—I ought to have been certain of it,” said Leonard, in a voice bursting from emotion, while the tears gushed from his eyes; “he could not have asked me to his house to sit down at his table as a mere object of your pity and contempt; and yet I am nothing else.”
The passionate vehemence in which he now spoke seemed so different from his recent manner, that both Lady Eleanor and Helen had some doubts as to his sanity, when he quickly resumed: “I was broke for cowardice,—dismissed the service with disgrace,—degraded! Well may I call it so, to be what I became. I would tell you that I was not guilty,—that Colonel Darcy knows,—but I dare not choose between the character of a coward and—a drunkard. I had no other prospect before me than a life of poverty and repining,—maybe of worse,—of shame and ignominy! when, last night, I received these letters; I scarcely thought they could be for me, even when I read my name on them. Yes, madam, this letter from the War Office permits me to serve as a volunteer with the Eighth Regiment of Foot; and this, which is without signature, encloses me fifty pounds to buy my outfit and join the regiment. It does not need a name; there is but one man living could stoop to help such as I am, and not feel dishonored by the contact; there is but one man brave enough to protect him branded as a coward.”
“You are right, sir,” cried Helen; “this must be my father's doing.”