“You have! That is well, that is well at all events,” cried she; “if he approves, then all is right.”
There was a ray of satisfaction on her countenance. He looked as if considering what she exactly meant. He hoped again, and was again resolved to hazard the decisive words. “If you knew all!” and he pressed her arm closer to him—“if I might tell you all——?”
Helen withdrew her arm decidedly. “I know all,” said she; “all I ought to know, Mr. Beauclerc.”
“You know all!” cried he, astonished at her manner.
“You know the circumstances in which I am placed?”
He alluded to the position in which he stood with Lady Castlefort; she thought he meant with respect to Lady Blanche, and she answered—“Yes: I know all!” and her eye turned towards the boat.
“I understand you,” said he; “you think I ought to go?”
“Certainly,” said she. It never entered into her mind to doubt the truth of what Lady Cecilia had told her, and she had at first been so much embarrassed by the fear of betraying what she felt she ought not to feel, and she was now so shocked by what she thought his dishonourable conduct, that she repeated almost in a tone of severity—“Certainly, Mr. Beauclerc, you ought to go.”
The words, “since you are engaged,”—“you know you are engaged,” she was on the point of adding, but Lady Cecilia’s injunctions not to tell him that she had betrayed his secret stopped her.
He looked at her for an instant, and then abruptly, and in great agitation, said; “May I ask, Miss Stanley, if your affections are engaged?”