“On his part,” said Helen, “much and always; but on Cecilia’s there was only, from her over-awe of you, some little concealment; but the whole was broken off and repented of, whatever little there was, long since. And as to loving him, she never did; she told me so then, and often and often she has told me so since.”
“Convince me of that,” said Lady Davenant; “convince me that she thought what she said. I believe, indeed, that till she met General Clarendon she never felt any enthusiastic attachment, but I thought she liked that man—it was all coquetry, flirting nonsense perhaps. Be it so—I am willing to believe it. Convince me but that she is true—there is the only point of consequence. The man is dead and gone, the whole in oblivion, and all that is of importance is her truth; convince me but of that, and I am a happy mother.”
Helen brought recollections, and proofs from conversations at the time and letters since, confirming at least Cecilia’s own belief that she had never loved the man, that it was all vanity on her part and deception on his: Lady Davenant listened, willing to be convinced.
“And now,” said she, “let us put this matter out of our minds entirely—I want to talk to you of yourself.”
She took Helen out with her in her pony-phaeton, and spoke of Granville Beauclerc, and of his and Helen’s prospects of happiness.
Lady Cecilia, who was riding with her husband in some fields adjoining the park, caught a glimpse of the phaeton as it went along the avenue, and, while the general was giving some orders to the wood-ranger about a new plantation, she, telling him that she would be back in two minutes, cantered off to overtake her mother, and, making a short cut across the fields, she leaped a wide ha-ha which came in her way. She was an excellent horse-woman, and Fairy carried her lightly over; and when she heard the general’s voice in dismay and indignation at what she had done, she turned and laughed, and cantered on till she overtook the phaeton. The breeze had blown her hair most becomingly, and raised her colour, and her eyes were joyously bright, and her light figure, always well on horseback, now looked so graceful as she bent to speak to her mother, that her husband could not find it in his heart to scold her, and he who came to chide remained to admire. Her mother, looking up at her, could not help exclaiming,
“Well! certainly, you are an excessively pretty creature!”
“Bearers of good news always look well, I believe,” said she, smiling; “so there is now some goodness in my face.”
“That there certainly is,” said her mother, fondly.
“But you certainly don’t know what it is—you cannot know till I tell you, my dearest Helen—my dear mother, I mean. Granville Beauclerc will be here to-day—I am sure of it. So pray do not go far from home—do not go out of the grounds: this was what I was in such a hurry to say to you.”