“Oh, believe me,” cried Forester, passionately, “it is not of this change I would speak. I dared to ask with reference to another feeling.”
“Be it so,” said Helen, trembling, as if nerving herself for a strong and long-looked-for effort,-“be it so, my Lord, and is not my answer wide enough for both? Would not any change, short of a dishonorable one, make the decision I once came to a thousand times more necessary now?”
“Oh, Helen, these are cold and cruel words. Will you tell me that my rank and station are to be like a curse upon my happiness?”
“I spoke of our altered condition, my Lord. I spoke of the impossibility of your Lordship recurring to a theme which the sight of that thatched roof should have stifled. Nay, hear me out. It is not of you or your motives that is here the question; it is of me and my duties. They are there, my Lord,—they are with those whose hearts have been twined round mine from infancy,—mine when the world went well and proudly with us; doubly, trebly mine when affection can replace fortune, and the sympathies' of the humblest home make up for all the flatteries of the world. I have no reason to dwell longer on this to one who knows those of whom I speak, and can value them too.”
“But is there no place in your heart, Helen, for other affections than these; or is that place already occupied?”
“My Lord, you have borne my frankness so well, I must even submit to yours with a good grace. Still, this is a question you have no right to ask, or I to answer. I have told you that whatever doubt there might be as to your road in life, mine offered no alternative. That ought surely to be enough.”
“It shall be,” said Forester, with a low sigh, as, trembling in every limb, he arose from the seat. “And yet, Helen,” said he, in a voice barely above a whisper, “there might come a time when these duties, to which you cling with such attachment, should be rendered less needful by altered fortunes. I have heard that your father's prospects present more of hope than heretofore, have I not? Think that if the Knight should be restored to his own again, that then—”
“Nay,—it is scarcely worthy of your Lordship to exact a pledge which is to hang upon a decision like this. A verdict may give back my father's estate; it surely should not dispose of his daughter's hand?”
“I would exact nothing, Miss Darcy,” said Forester, stung by the tone of this reply. “But I see you cannot feel for the difficulties which beset him who has staked his all upon a cast. I asked, what might your feelings be, were the circumstances which now surround you altered?”
Helen was silent for a second or two; and then, as if having collected all her energy, she said: “I would that you had spared me—had spared yourself—the pain I now must give us both; but to be silent longer would be to encourage deception.” It was not till after another brief interval that she could continue: “Soon after you left this, my Lord, you wrote a letter to Miss Daly. This letter-I stop not now to ask with what propriety towards either of us—she left in my hands. I read it carefully; and if many of the sentiments it contained served to elevate your character in my esteem, I saw enough to show me that your resolves were scarcely less instigated by outraged pride than what you fancied to be a tender feeling. This perhaps might have wounded me, had I felt differently towards you. As it was, I thought it for the best; I deemed it happier that your motives should be divided ones, even though you knew it not. But as I read on, my Lord,—as I perused the account of your interview with Lady Wallincourt,—then a new light broke suddenly upon me; I found what, had I known more of life, should not have surprised, but what in my ignorance did indeed astonish me, that my father's station was regarded as one which could be alleged as a reason against your feeling towards his daughter. Now, my Lord, we have our pride too; and had your influence over me been all that ever you wished it, I tell you freely that I never would permit my affection to be gratified at the price of an insult to my father's house. If I were to say that your sentiments towards me should not have suffered it, would it be too much?”