Now, however, it seemed to her that things had not been going right with her, and that she had her own impulses all to blame. She had taken a great liking to Mr. Hamilton, and she had petted him and made much of him, and probably got talked of with him, and all the time she never had the faintest idea that he was likely to misunderstand her feelings towards him. She thought he would know well enough that she admired him and was friendly and free with him because he was the devoted follower of the Dictator. And at first she regarded the Dictator himself only as the chief of a cause which she had persuaded herself to recognise and talked herself into regarding as her cause. Therefore it had not occurred to her to think that Hamilton would not be quite satisfied with the friendliness which she showed to him as the devoted follower of their common leader. She went on the assumption that they were sworn and natural comrades, Hamilton and herself, bound together by the common bond of servitude to the Dictator. All this dream had been suddenly shattered by the visit of Ericson, and the curious mission on which he had come. Helena felt her cheeks flushing up again and again as she thought of it. It had told her everything. It had shown her what a mistake she had made when she lavished so much of her friendly attentions on Hamilton—and what a mistake she had made when she failed to understand her own feelings about the Dictator. The moment he spoke to her of Hamilton's offer she knew at a flash how it was with her. The burst of disappointment and anger with which she found that he had come there to recommend to her the love of another man was a revelation that almost dazzled her by its light. What had she said, what had she done? she now kept asking herself. Had she betrayed her secret to him, just at the very moment when it had first betrayed itself to her? Had she allowed him to guess that she loved him? Her cheeks kept reddening again and again at the terrible suspicion. What must he think of her? Would he pity her? Would he wonder at her—would he feel shocked and sorry, or only gently mirthful? Did he regard her only as a more or less precocious child? What had she said—how had she looked—had her eyes revealed her, or her trembling lips, or her anger, or the tone of her voice? A young man accustomed to ways of abstinence is tempted one sudden night into drinking more champagne than is good for him, and in a place where there are girls, where there is one girl in whose eyes above all others he wishes to seem an admirable and heroic figure. He gets home all right—he is apparently in possession of all his senses; but he has an agonised doubt as to what he may have said or done while the first flush of the too much champagne was still in his spirits and his brain. He remembers talking with her. He tries to remember whether she looked at all amazed or shocked. He does not think she did; he cannot recall any of her words, or his words; but he may have said something to convince her that he had taken too much champagne, and for her even to think anything of the kind about him would have seemed to him eternal and utter degradation in her eyes. Very much like this were the feelings of Helena Langley about the words which she might have spoken, the looks which she might have given, to the Dictator. All she knew was that she was not quite herself at the time: the rest was mere doubt and misery. And Helena Langley passed in society for being a girl who never cared in the least what she said or what she did, so long as she was not conventional.
To add to her concern, the Duchess of Deptford was announced. Now Helena was very fond of the beautiful and bright little Duchess, with her kindly heart, her utter absence of affectation, and her penetrating eyes. She gathered herself up and went to meet her friend.
'My! but you are looking bad, child!' the genial Duchess said. She may have been a year and a half or so older than Helena. 'What's the matter with you, anyway? Why have you got those blue semicircles round your eyes? Ain't you well?'
'Oh, yes, quite well,' Helena hastened to explain. 'Nothing is ever the matter with me, Duchess. My father says Nature meant to make me a boy and made a mistake at the last moment. I am the only girl he knows—so he tells me—that never is out of sorts.'
'Well, then, my dear, that only proves the more certainly that Nature distinctly meant you for a girl when she made you a girl.'
'Dear Duchess, how do you explain that?'
'Because you have got the art of concealing your feelings, which men have not got, anyhow,' the Duchess said, composedly. 'If you ain't out of sorts about something—and with these blue semicircles under your lovely eyes—well, then, a semicircle is not a semicircle, nor a girl a girl. That's so.'
'Dear Duchess, never mind me. I am really in the rudest health——'
'And no troubles—brain, or heart, or anything?'
'Oh, no; none but those common to all human creatures.'