“So, Mr. Wingfold!—that is the way you help the helpless!”
“How can any man help without knowing what has to be helped?” returned the curate. “The very being of his help depends upon his knowing the truth. It is very plain you do not trust me, and equally impossible I should be of any service as long as the case is such.”
Again Helen held her peace. Resentment and dislike towards himself combined with terror of his anticipated counsel to render her speechless.
Her silence lasted so long that Wingfold came to the resolution of making a venture that had occurred to him more than once that morning. Had he not been convinced that a soul was in dire misery, he would not have had recourse to the seeming cruelty.
“Would this help to satisfy you that, whatever my advice may be worth, at least my discretion may be trusted?” he said.
They were at the moment passing through a little thicket in the park, where nobody could see them, and as he spoke, he took the knife-sheath from his pocket, and held it out to her.
She started like a young horse at something dead: she had never seen it, but the shape had an association. She paled, retreated a step, with a drawing back of her head and neck and a spreading of her nostrils, stared for a moment, first at the sheath, then at the curate, gave a little moan, bit her under lip hard, held out her hand, but as if she were afraid to touch the thing, and said:
“What is it? Where did you find it?”
She would have taken it, but Wingfold held it fast.
“Give it me,” she said imperatively. “It is mine. I lost it.”