“I saw a flash of light, as it were, come across his face—it was hope—but still it was not certainty. I saw this: oh! how quick one sees. He pointed to the first words of the letter, held his finger under them, and his hand trembled—think of his hand trembling! ‘Read,’ he said, and I read. How I brought myself to pronounce the words, I cannot imagine. I read what, as I hope for mercy, I had no recollection of ever having written—‘My dear, too dear Henry.’ ‘Colonel D’Aubigny?’ said the general. I answered, ‘Yes.’ He looked astonished at my self-possession—and so was I. For another instant his finger rested, pressing down there under the words, and his eyes on my face, as if he would have read into my soul. ‘Ask me no more,’ I repeated, scarcely able to speak; and something I said, I believe, about honour and not betraying you. He turned to the signature, and, putting his hand down upon it, asked, ‘What name is signed to this letter?’ I answered, I have seen—I know—I believe it is ‘Emma.’
“‘You knew then of this correspondence?’ was his next question. I confessed I did. He said that was wrong, ‘but quite a different affair’ from having been engaged in it myself, or some such word. His countenance cleared; that pale look of the forehead, the fixed purpose of the eye, changed. Oh! I could see—I understood it all with half a glance—saw the natural colour coming back, and tenderness for me returning—yet some doubt lingering still. He stood, and I heard some half-finished sentences. He said that you must have been very young at that time; I said, ‘Yes, very young:’—‘And the man was a most artful man,’ he observed; I said. ‘Yes, very artful.’ That was true, I am sure. Clarendon then recollected that you showed some emotion one day when Colonel D’Aubigny was first mentioned—at that time, you know, when we heard of his death. I said nothing. The general went on: ‘I could hardly have believed all this of Helen Stanley,’ he said. He questioned no farther:—and oh! Helen, what do you think I did next? but it was the only thing left me to put an end to doubts, which, to me, must have been fatal—forgive me, Helen!”
“Tell me what you did,” said Helen.
“Cannot you guess?”
“You told him positively that I wrote the letters?”
“No, not so bad, I never said that downright falsehood—no, I could not; but I did almost as bad.”
“Pray tell me at once, my dear Cecilia.”
“Then, in the first place, I stretched out my hand for the whole packet of letters which lay on the table untouched.”
“Well?”
“Well, he put them into my hands and said, ‘There is no direction on these but to myself, I have not looked at any of them except this, which in ignorance I first opened; I have not read one word of any of the others.’”