"What would you do if you were in my place?" demanded Helen.
"As you have done," answered Morley.
"Ay, and perhaps more," said Helen. "You would do all that I should wish to do, but dare not offer, because I know you would reject it angrily."
"Not angrily--not angrily, with you," exclaimed Morley; "but firmly. You have already done as much, and more, than the most generous feeling could dictate; and as I believe it is a pleasure to you to do it, I will not refuse to accept what you propose, though I see that you do not know the whole circumstances. Let me tell you, then, my dear Miss Barham, what they are, in some degree; for if you feel a pleasure in doing a generous act, the satisfaction will be doubled when you know that act relieves one who has the greatest regard for you from a severe embarrassment."
He then explained to her, that the only means he had found of paying the large claims against him, were, to assign the rents of almost all his landed property, to dismiss his servants, to curtail his expenditure, and to live upon an income comparatively small and pitiful. Helen's cheek first grew pale, and then burned with the hue of crimson; and as he went on she burst into a bitter flood of tears, exclaiming--"And we have done this!--we have done this!"
Morley took her hand, and pressed his lips upon it, saying--"Others have done it, and were not to blame. You have remedied it all, and how am I to thank you?"
"Oh, no, no!" she exclaimed--"I have not remedied it all; I fear that I still am robbing you--robbing you of that fortune which you used so nobly; and that, too, when I owe you everything--life, and more than life; for in the state I was when you found me, I could not have lived long, and should not only have died, but have died with shame and misery!--Ah! you cannot tell, Sir Morley," she continued, "how much sooner I would be a pensioner upon your bounty for a small pittance to supply my daily wants, than take from my benefactor that property which I cannot but feel of right is his."
"Not so, indeed!" answered Morley Ernstein; "it is not mine, Helen. It was of right your brother's, and is yours. I scarcely know, indeed, whether I am justified in not following out the plan that I had first proposed, and paying you all. But as you wish it, I will not insist upon that point; and now, tell me how you are, and let me hear all that has happened to you, since we met."
"Why, I am well," replied Helen, wiping away the tears which still felt inclined to flow; "well, and yet not quite well. But speak of yourself--I scarcely dare to ask how you are, for I see that you are ill, Sir Morley."
"I must not have you call me by that name," said Morley Ernstein; "after the strange way in which our fate has been linked together, we can but look upon each other as brother and sister; and if you will let me, Helen, I will be a brother to you instead of him that you have lost."