"I shall leave you, my love, to peruse it alone; and presently, when I think you have done so, will return to ask if you cannot in some degree comprehend what must have been felt at its not obtaining an answer."
Having said this, Lady Harrington retired without waiting for a reply, and leaving Helen unable for a moment to learn what her heart throbbed with such violence to know.
The letter of which Helen now held the copy has been already presented to the reader; and if she chance to be one of Helen's age, having at her heart a love unbreathed to any human ear, she may guess what my Helen's feelings were at finding such love had met an equal, an acknowledged return. Such a one may guess Helen's feelings;—but no other can.
Lady Harrington's presently now seemed to Helen as much shorter than it really was as the last had seemed longer. She had read the letter but four times through, and pressed it to her heart, kissed it, and so forth, not half so much as she desired, and it deserved, when a knock was heard at the door, and the old lady again entered.
The happy, but agitated girl stood up to receive her, and though she spoke not a single word, the manner in which she rushed into her maternal arms, and hid her face upon her bosom, spoke plainly enough that the gallant colonel had no reason to despair.
"What must he have thought of me!" were Helen's first words—"And you?—and Sir Gilbert?—Such a letter! Dearest, dearest Lady Harrington, you could not really think I had ever received it!"
"You have struck the right chord there, my Helen. We all deserve to have suffered ten thousand times more than we have done, for having for a moment believed it possible you should have received that letter and not invented some means to answer it—let the answer be what it might. And this answer?—you have not yet told me what it is to be. I do not know how much, or how little, you may happen to like William, my dear; but in case you should have no insuperable aversion to him, the business is made delightfully easy by this adventure. The elopement is done and over already."
Helen only pressed Lady Harrington's hand to her heart, but said nothing.
"Yes,—you have found the way to let me into your secret, without speaking. This little heart throbs violently enough to prevent any suspicion of indifference. But what am I to say to my impatient hero below?—That you will, or you won't marry him, as soon as the lawyers will let you?"
"Oh! Lady Harrington!"