“Not by hers—never.”
“Not by yours, Helen, never. And yet, why should I say so? This very morning, yours, had I not known you, yours would have misled me.”
“Oh, my foolish absurd habit of blushing, how I wish I could prevent it!” said Helen; “I know it will make me betray somebody some time or other.”
“Betray! What have you to betray?” cried Lady Davenant, leaning forward with an eagerness of eye and voice that startled Helen from all power of immediate reply. After an instant’s pause, however, she answered firmly, “Nothing, Lady Davenant, and that there is nothing wrong to be known about Cecilia, I as firmly believe as that I stand here at this moment. Can you suspect anything really wrong?”
“Suspect!—wrong!” cried Lady Davenant, starting up, with a look in her eyes which made Helen recoil. “Helen, what can you conceive that I suspect wrong?—Cecilia?—Captain D’Aubigny?—What did you mean? Wrong did you say?—of Cecilia? Could you mean—could you conceive, Helen, that I, having such a suspicion could be here—living with her—or—living anywhere—” And she sank down on the sofa again, seized with sudden spasm—in a convulsion of agonising pain. But she held Helen’s hand fast grasped, detaining her—preventing her from pulling the bell; and by degrees the pain passed off, the livid hue cleared away, the colour of life once more returned, but more tardily than before, and Helen was excessively alarmed.
“Poor child! my poor, dear child, I feel—I hear your heart beating. You are a coward, Helen, but a sweet creature; and I love you—and I love my daughter. What were we saying?”
“Oh, say no more! say no more now, for Heaven’s sake,” said Helen, kneeling beside her; and, yielding to that imploring look, Lady Davenant, with a fond smile, parted the hair on her forehead, kissed her, and remained perfectly quiet and silent for some time.
“I am quite well again now,” said she, “and quite composed. If Cecilia has told her husband the whole truth, she will continue to be, as she is, a happy wife; but if she have deceived him in the estimation of a single word—she is undone. With him, of all men, never will confidence, once broken, unite again. Now General Clarendon told me this morning—would I had known it before the marriage!—that he had made one point with my daughter, and only one, on the faith of which he married: the point was, that she should tell him, if she had ever loved any other man. And she told him—I fear from some words which he said afterwards—I am sure he is in the belief—the certainty, that his wife never loved any man breathing but himself.”
“Nor did she,” said Helen. “I can answer for it—she has told him the truth—and she has nothing to fear, nor have you.”
“You give me new life!” cried Lady Davenant, her face becoming suddenly radiant with hope; “but how can you answer for this, Helen? You had no part in any deceit, I am sure, but there was something about a miniature of you, which I found in Colonel D’Aubigny’s hands one day. That was done, I thought at the time, to deceive me, to make me believe that you were his object.—Deceit there was.”