“Base!” said the general.
“He was base,” answered Helen.
General Clarendon held in his hand, along with the picture, one letter separated from the rest, open; he looked at it as if embarrassed, while Helen spoke the last words, and he repeated, “Base! yes, he certainly was, or he would have destroyed these letters.”
Again Helen was on the point of saying that Colonel D’Aubigny had told Cecilia he had done so, but fortunately her agitation, in default of presence of mind, kept her silent.
“This is the first letter I opened,” said the general, “before I was aware that they were not what I should read. I saw only the first words, I thought then that I had a right to read them. When these letters met my eyes, I conceived them to have been written by my wife. I had a right to satisfy myself respecting the nature of the correspondence; that done, I looked no farther. I bore my suspense—I waited till she awoke.”
“So she told me, Cecilia has told me all; but even if she had not, in any circumstances who could doubt your honour, General Clarendon?”
“Then trust to it, Miss Stanley, for the past, for the future, trust to it! You gratify me more than I can express—you do me justice. I wished to return these letters to you with, my own hand,” continued he, “to satisfy myself, in the first place, that there was no mistake. Of that your present candour, indeed, the first look of that ingenuous countenance, was sufficient.”
Helen felt that she blushed all over.
“Pardon me for distressing you, my dear Helen. It was a matter in which a man MUST be selfish, must in point of honour, must in point of feeling, I owe to your candour not merely relief from what I could not endure and live, but relief from suspicion,—suspicion of the truth of one dearer to me than life.”
Helen sat as if she had been transfixed.